Monster Media 1996 #14/Monster Media No. 14 (April 1996) (Monster Media, Inc.).ISO/pcboard/ais_et11.zip/QUOTES.TXT

Text File | 1996-01-07 | 361KB | 11,182 lines

Think!                  -- IBM's motto

Ya gotta know when to code 'em, know when to modem
know when to optimize, know when to run.
You don't count your cycles when your sittin' at the keyboard
there's time enough for countin' when compilin's done.

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
GRAFFITI

|It is written:
|        Blessed are the weak, for they shall
|        improve the marksmanship of the strong.
|
|               IBM Technical Marketing Manual
|               Chapter 14, "Strategies".

We are the people our parents warned us about.

Question authority.

We should forgive our enemies, but only after they have been taken out and shot.

I'm sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

Don't take life too seriously.
You'll never get out of it alive.

I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.

Everyone needs to believe in something.
I believe I'll have another beer.

Lead me not into temptation.   I can find it for myself.

Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.

I used to be disgusted, now I'm just amused

Time flies when you don't know what you're doing.

Those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do.

What? Me worry?
                                        Alfred E. Neumann

Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645)
 A ronin, or masterless samurai, Musashi is often referred to as the "Sword
Saint" in Japanese literature. By the age of 29 Musashi had killed 60 samurai
in combat, then retired to become a teacher and artist. Most of his duels were
fought with bokken, or wooden practice swords, against conventionally armed
opponents. He is known for his Niten Ryu, or "Two Heavens" school of combat,
and as the author of the Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings). He died of
old age.

 Bunbu itchi.
 (The pen and sword in accord.)
                                        ancient Japanese saying

The sword is the soul of the Samurai.
                                        ancient Japanese saying

 "There are few men who can quickly reply to the question, 'What is the Way or
the Warrior?' This is because they do not know in their hearts. From this we
can see they do not follow the Way of the warrior. By the Way of the warrior
is meant death. The Way of the warrior is death."
                    Yamamoto Tsunenori, critique of the decline of the code
                                        of Bushido, early Tokugawa period

 Everyone needs long-range goals if for no other reason than to keep from
being frustrated by short-range failures.

Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.

Everything bows to success, even grammar.

 Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavour of life, take big bites.
Moderation is for monks.  -- Lazarus Long

Everything is for sale; only the price is negotiable.

 Everything is nothing.  Everything is all.  All is one.  One is inconceivable,
infinite.  Therefore it is nothing.  Therefore everything is nothing.

Everything needs a little oil now and then.

Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.

Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you.

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Experience is awareness of encompassing the totality of things.

Experience is directly proportional to equipment ruined.

Experience is the comb that Nature gives us when we are bald.

Experience is the one thing you have plenty of
when you're too old to get the job.

Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson

Experiments are often tricky--
  There's no exception to this rule,
 What CAN have made that rat a sticky,
  Slimy, rather smelly pool?

 Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts
often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they
are to think so.  -- Lazarus Long

 Exploit the inevitable (which means, take credit for anything good which
happens whether you had anything to do with it or not).

Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Fast personal decisions are likely to be wrong.

Few of us ever test our powers of deduction,
except when filling out an income tax form.

Field's revelation:
 If you see a man holding a clipboard and looking official, the chances are
good that he is supposed to be doing something menial.

Finagle's Creed: Science is truth: Don't be misled by facts.

Finagle's Very Fundamental Finding:
 If a string has one end, then it has another end.

Find happiness in your work, or you may never find it anywhere else.

Find out the cost before you get in.

Fine's Corollary: Functionality breeds Contempt.

First Law of Bridge: It's always the partner's fault.

First Law of Office Holders: Get reelected.

 Flying saucers on occasion
  Show themselves to human eyes.
 Aliens fume, put off invasion
  While they brand these tales as lies.

Fools are certain, but wise men hesitate.

Quote for the call:
What fools these morals be!

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

...and we'll crush the crummy clones
and break their tiny bones
ever onward
ever onward...
                        IBM Death Song

Weatherwax's Postulate:
The degree to which you overreact to information will be in
inverse proportion to its accuracy.

The Ire Principle:
Never try to pacify someone at the height of his rage.

First Rule of Acting:
Whatever happens, look as if it were intended.

Zadra's Law of Biomechanics:
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

}Livingston's Laws of Fat:
  1.  Fat expands to fill any apparel worn.
  2.  A fat person walks in the middle of the hall.

Corollary to Livingston's Laws of Fat:
Two fat people will walk side by side, whether they know each other or not.

The Three Least Credible Sentences in the English Language:
  1.  "The check is in the mail."
  2.  "Of course I'll respect you in the morning."
  3.  "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

First Law of Photography:
The best shots happen immediately after the last frame is exposed.

Second Law of Photography:
The best shots are generally attempted through the lens cap.

Third Law of Photography:
The best shots will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens
the darkroom and all of the dark leaks out.

Mae West's Observation:
To err is human, but it feels divine.

Launegayer's Observation:
Asking dumb questions is easier than correcting dumb mistakes.

Bogovich's Law:
He who hesitates is probably right.

Strano's Law:
When all else fails, try the boss's suggestion.

Brintnall's Second Law:
If you are given two contradictory orders, obey them both.

Shapiro's Law of Reward:
The one who does the least work will get the most credit.

Johnson's Law"
The number of minor illnesses among the employees is inversely
proportional to the health of the organization.

Owen's Law for Secretaries:
As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will
ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Sandiland's Law:
Free time which unexpectedly becomes available will be wasted.

Harbour's Law:
The deadline is one week after the original deadline.

Eddie's First Law of Business:
Never conduct negotiations before 10 A.M. or after 4 P.M.  Before
10 you appear too anxious, and after 4 they think you're desperate.

Sloane's First Law of Procrastination:
The more proficient one is at procrastination,
the less proficient one need be at all else.

Doane's Second Law of Procrastination:
The slower one works, the fewer mistakes one makes.

Worker's Dilemma:
  1.  No  matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
  2.  What you don't do is always more important than what you do.

Second Law of Committo-Dynamics:
The less you enjoy serving on committees,
the more likely you are to be pressed to do so.

Shanahan's Law:
The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.

Old and Kahn's Law:
The efficiency of a committee meeting is inversely proportional
to the number of participants and the time spent on deliberations.

Drummond's Law of Personnel Recruiting:
The ideal resume will turn up one day after the position is filled.

Gluck's First Law:
Whichever way you turn upon entering an elevator,
the buttons will be on the opposite side.

Lynch's Law:
The elevator always comes after you have put down your bag.

Boren's Law:
  1.  When in charge, ponder.
  2.  When in doubt, mumble.
  3.  When in trouble, delegate.

Connor's Second Law:
If something is confidential, it will be left in the copy machine.

Langsam's Ornithological Axiom:
It's difficult to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys.

Gabirol's Observation:
The wise are pleased when they discover truth,
fools when they discover falsehood.

Owen's Theory of Organizational Deviance:
Every organization has an allotted number of positions to be filled by misfits.

Corollary to Owen's Theory of Organizational Deviance:
Once a misfit leaves, another will be recruited.

Vile's Law for Educators:
No one is listening until you make a mistake.

Ellard's Laws:
  1.  Those who want to learn will learn.
  2.  Those who do not want to learn will lead enterprises.
  3.  Those incapable of either learning or leading will regulate
      scholarship and enterprise to death.

Vile's Law of Grading Papers:
All papers after the top are upside down or backwards,
until you right the pile.  Then the process repeats.

Meredith's Law for Grad School Survival:
Never let you major professor know that you exist.

Felson's Law:
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Pavlu's Rules for Economy in Research:
  1.  Deny the last established truth on the list.
  2.  Add yours.
  3.  Pass the list.

Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross-references.

Mr. Cooper's Law:
If you do not understand a particular word in a piece of technical writing,
ignore it. The piece will make perfect sense without it.
..
Bogovich's Corollary to Mr. Cooper's Law:
If the piece makes no sense without the word,
it will make no sense with the word.

Seeger's Law:
Anything in parentheses can be ignored.

Valery's Law:
History is the science of what never happens twice.

Darrow's Comment on History:
History repeats itself.  That's one of the things wrong with history.

First Law of Particle Physics:
The shorter the life of the particle, the greater it costs to produce.

Second Law of Particle Physics:
The basic building blocks of matter do not occur in nature.

Einstein's Observation:
Inasmuch as the mathematical theorems are related to reality,
they are not sure; inasmuch as they are sure, they are not related to reality.

Finman's Law of Mathematics:
Nobody wants to ready anyone else's formulas.

Laws of Scientific Progress:
  1.  Exceptions always outnumber rules.
  2.  There are always exceptions to established exceptions.
  3.  By the time one masters the exceptions, no one recalls the
      rules to which they apply.

Oliver's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

First Rule of Pathology:
Most well-trodden paths lead nowhere.

Foster's Law:
The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the faultfinders.

First Principle of Self-Determination:
What you resist, you become.

Steiner's First Precept:
Knowledge based on external evidence is unreliable.

Steiner's Second Precept:
Logic can never decide what is possible or impossible.

Colridge's Law:
Extremes meet.

Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is any way to delay an important decision,
the good bureaucray, public or private, will find it.

Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will ten to support your theory.

Perlsweig's Second Law:
Whatever goes around, comes around.

Meadow's Maxim:
You can't push on a rope.

Oppenheimer's Law:
There is no such thing as instant experience.

Disimoni's rule of Cognition:
Believing is seeing.

The Siddhartha Principle:
You cannot cross a river in two strides.

Loftus' Theory on Personnel Recruitment:
Far-away talent always seems better than home-developed talent.

Gillenson's (de-sexed) Law of Expectation:
Never get excited about a blind date because of how it sounds over the phone.

Denniston's Law:
Virtue is its own punishment.

Denniston's Corollary:
If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.

Ruby's Principle of Close Encounters:
The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you
are with someone with whom you don't want to be seen.

Troutman's First Programming Postulate:
If a test installation functions perfectly,
all subsequent systems will malfunction.

Troutman's Second Programming Postulate:
Not until a program has been in production for at least six
months will the most harmful error be discovered.

Troutman's Third Programming Postulate:
Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order will be.

Troutman's Fourth Programming Postulate:
Interchangeable tapes won't.

The Rule of the Way Out:
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.

Ringwald's Law of Household Geometry:
Any horizontal surface is soon piled up.

Klipstein's First Law of Engineering:
A patent application will be preceded by one week by a similar
application made by an independent worker.

Klipstein's Second Law of Engineering:
Firmness of delivery dates in inversely proportional to the
tightness of the schedule.


Klipstein's Fourth Law of Engineering:
Any wire cut to length will be too short.

First Law for Naive Engineers:
In any calculation, any error which can creep in will do so.

Second Law for Naive Engineers:
Any error in any calculation will be in the direction of most harm.

Third Law for Naive Engineers:
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from
engineering handbooks) are to be treated as variables.

Fourth Law for Naive Engineers:
The best approximation of service conditions in the laboratory
will not begin to meet those conditions encountered in actual service.

Ely's Law:
Wear the right costume and the part plays itself.

Parkinson's Law of Delay:
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Murphy's Law of Government:
If anything can go wrong, it will do so in triplicate.

The Bureaucracy Principle:
Only a bureaucracy can fight a bureaucracy.

Soper's Law:
Any bureaucracy reorganized to enhance efficiency is immediately
indistinguishable from its predecessor.

Gates' Law:
The only important information in a hierarchy is who knows what.

Hoffstedt's Employment Principle:
Confusion creates jobs.

The Fifth Rule Of Politics:
When a politician gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong.

McKernan's Maxim:
Those who are unable to learn from past meetings are condemned to repeat them.

The Lippman Lemma:
People specialize in their area of greatest weakness.

Fahnstock's Third Law of Debate:
Any issue worth debating is worth avoiding altogether.

Hartz's Law of Rhetoric:
Any argument carried far enough will end up in semantics.


Mitchell's Second Law of Committology:
Once the way to screw up a project is presented for
consideration, it will invariably be accepted as the soundest solution.

Mitchell's Third Law of Committology:
After the solution screws up the project, all those who initially
endorsed it will say, "I wish I had voiced my reservations at the time."

Kim's Rule of Committees:
If an hour has been spent amending a sentence,
someone will move to delete the paragraph.

The Eleventh Commandment:
Thou shalt not committee.

Kennedy's Comment on Committees:
A committee is twelve men doing the work of one.

Sweeney's Law:
The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the
amount of progress.

Morris' Law of Conferences:
The most interesting paper will be scheduled simultaneously with
the second most interesting paper.

Third Law of Committo-Dynamics:
Those most opposed to serving on committees are made chairmen.

Seventh Law of Kitchen Confusion:
The more time and energy you put into preparing a meal, the
greater the chance your guest will spend the entire meal
discussing other meals they have had.

Helga's Rule:
Say no, then negotiate.

Brown's First Rule of Leadership:
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

Brown's Second Rule of Leadership:
The best way to succeed in politics is to find a crowd that's
going somewhere and get in front of them.

Walton's Law of Politics:
A fool and his money are soon elected.

Wilkie's Law:
A good slogan can stop analysis for fifty years.

Sherman's Rule of Press Conferences:
The explanation of a disaster will be made by a stand-in.

The Murphy Philosophy:
Smile ... tomorrow will be worse.

Courtois' Rule:
If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less.

Ogden Nash's Law:
Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long.

Hutchins' Law:
You can't outtalk a man who knows what he's talking about.

Law of Arrival:
Those who live closest arrive latest.

Maryann's Law:
You can always find what you're not looking for.

Lemar's Parking Postulate:
If you have had to park six blocks away, when you walk up, you
will find two emply parking spaces right in front of the building entrance.

O'Toole's Axiom:
On child is not enough, but two children are far too many.

Witzing's Law of Progeny Performance:
Any child who chatters non-stop at home will adamantly refuse to
utter a word when requested to demonstrate for an audience.

Witzing's Observation:
Any shy, introverted child will choose a crowded public area to
loudly demonstrate any newly acquired shocking vocabulary.

Sintetos' First Law of Consumerism:
A 60-day warranty guarantees that the product
will self-destruct on the 61st day.

Yount's First Law of Mail Ordering:
The most important item in an order will no longer be available.

Yount's Second Law of Mail Ordering:
The second most important item in an order will be back-ordered for six months.

Yount's Third Law of Mail Ordering:
During the time an item is back-ordered,
it will be available cheaper and quicker from any other sources.

The Reliability Principle:
The difference between the Laws of Nature and Murphy's Law is that with the
Laws of Nature you can count on things screwing up the same way every time.

Darwin's Law:
Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.
  Bloch's Extension to Darwin's Law:
  So will Darwinists.

Kent Family Law:
Never change your plans because of the weather.

Law of the Marketplace:
If only one price can be obtained for any quotation,
the price will be unreasonable.

Finman's Bargain Basement Principle:
The one you want is never the one on sale.

Hane's Law:
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Hill's Commentaries on Murphy's Law:
  1.  If we lose much by having things go wrong, take all
      possible care.
  2.  If we have nothing to lose, relax.
  3.  If we have everything to gain, relax.
  4.  If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

The Last Law of Product Design:
If you can't fix it, feature it.

The Last Law of Robotics:
The only real errors are human errors.

The Last Law:
If several things that could have gone wrong have not gone wrong,
it would have been ultimately beneficial for them to have gone wrong.


Firestone's Law of Forecasting:
  Chicken Little only has to be right once.

Manly's Maxim:
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Moer's truism:
  The trouble with most jobs is the job holder's
  resemblence to being one of a sled dog team.
   No one gets a change of scenery except the lead dog.

Cannon's Comment:
  If you tell the boss you were late for work because you
  had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

MURPHY'S LAW:  If anything can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's Corollary:
  Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Constant:
  Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law:
  Everything goes wrong all at once.

Finagle's Third Law:
  In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
  correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Gumperson's Law:
  The probability of anything happening is in
  inverse ratio to its desirability.

Rudin's Law:
  In crises that force people to choose among
  alternative courses of action, most people will
  choose the worst one possible.

Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
  You can't win.  You can't break even.  You can't quit.

Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
  Nothing ever goes away.

You never find a lost article until you replace it.

Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
  The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional
  to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

If nobody uses it, there's a reason.

You get the most of what you need the least.

First Law of Revision:
  Information necessitiating a change of design will be
  conveyed to the designer after - and only after - the
  plans are complete.  (Often called the 'Now They Tell Us' Law)

Second Law of Revision:
  The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the
  further its influence will extend and the more plans
  will have to be redrawn.

Corollary to the First Law of Revision:
  In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus
  one obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong
  way, so as to expedite subsequent revision.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
I.  Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
II. Any given program costs more and takes longer.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
III. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
IV. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
V. Any program will expand to fill available memory.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VI. The value of a program is proportional to the weightof its output.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VII. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities
     of the programmer who must maintain it.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VIII. Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
IX. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
    detectable errors, which by definition are limited.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
X. Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Shaw's Principle:
 Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Wyszkowski's Second Law:
  Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

Schmidt's Law:
  If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.

 Beware of the man who works hard to learn something,learns it,
 and finds himself no wiser than before. He isfull of murderous
 resentment of people who are ignorantwithout having come by
 their ignorance the hard way.    - Bokonon

  You can lead a man to slaughter,but you can't make him think.

  Don't get mad, get even.

Mark's mark:
  Love is a matter of chemistry;
  sex is a matter of physics.

Korman's conclusion:
  The trouble with resisting temptation is it maynever come your way again.

Knight's Law:
  Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

Maugham's Thought:
  Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Krueger's Observation:
  A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civilservice exam
  in order to work for the government.

Harver's Law:
  A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Gibb's Law:
  Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Brooke's Law:
  Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fooldiscovers
  something which either abolishes the system orexpands it beyond recognition.

The first Myth of Management:  It exists.

Spend sufficient time confirming the need andthe need will disappear.

Peter's Placebo:
  An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Wiker's Law:
  Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Weinberg's Second Law:
  If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
  the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

The Unspeakable Law:
  As soon as you mention something;
  if it is good, it goes away.
  if it is bad, it happens.

  Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning
  and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Lynch's Law:  When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Law of Revelation:
  The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Hellrung's Law:  If you wait, it will go away.
      Shevelson's Extension:  ... having done its damage.
            Grelb's Addition:  ... if it was bad, it will be back.

Grossman's Misquote:
  Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

Witten's Law:
  Whenever you cut your fingernails,
   you will find aneed for them an hour later.

Perkin's postulate:
  The bigger they are, the harder they hit.

Stewart's Law of Retroaction:
  It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

MacDonald's Second Law:
  Consultants are mystical people who ask a company fora number
   and give it back to them.

Horngren's Observation:
 (generalized)  The real world is a special case.

Never attribute to malice that which isadequately explained by stupidity.

Woltman's Law:
  Never program and drink beer at the same time.

Gallois' Revelation:
  If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes outbut tomfoolery.
   But this tomfoolery, having passed through avery expensive machine,
   is somehow enobled, and no one daresto criticize it.

Cohen's Law:
  What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing onthe facts,
   not the facts themselves.

Colson's Law:
  When you've got them by the balls, their heartsand minds will follow.

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.

Goldwyn's Law of Contracts:
  A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Sevareid's Law:  The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Pournelle's Law of Costs and Schedules:
  Everything costs more and takes longer.

Klipstein's Lament:
  All warranty and guarantee clauses are voidedby payment of the invoice.

Klipstein's Observation:
  Any product cut to length will be too short.

Sueker's Note:
  If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.

Rosenfield's Regret:
  The most delicate component will be dropped.

de la Lastra's Law:
  After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removedfrom an access cover,
   it will be discovered that the wrongaccess cover has been removed.

de la Lastra's Corollary:
  After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws,
  it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.

Design flaws travel in groups.

Gerrold's Fundamental Truth:
  It's a good thing money can't buy happiness.
  We couldn't stand the commercials.

Gerrold's Law:  A little ignorance can go a long way.
Lyall's Addendum:  ... in the direction of maximum harm.

  Democracy is the theory that the common people know whatthey want
   and deserve to get it good and hard.               H.L. Menchen

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.               H. L. Menchen

Murphy's Military Laws:
1. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.

Murphy's Military Laws:
2. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

Murphy's Military Laws:
3. Friendly fire ain't.

Murphy's Military Laws:
4. The most dangerous thing in the combat zoneis an officer with a map.

Murphy's Military Laws:
5. The problem with taking the easy way out is
   that the enemy has already mined it.

Murphy's Military Laws:
6. The buddy system is essential to your survival;
   it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.

Murphy's Military Laws:
7. The further you are in advance of your own positions,
   the more likely your artillery will shoot short.

Murphy's Military Laws:8. Incoming fire has the right of way.

Murphy's Military Laws:
9. If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.

Murphy's Military Laws:
10. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.

Murphy's Military Laws:
11. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.

Murphy's Miltary Laws:
12. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used
    on abandoned positions.

Murphy's Military Laws:
13. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire
    is incoming friendly fire.

Murphy's Military Laws:
 14. There is nothing more satisfying that having someone take
    a shot at you, and miss.

Murphy's Military Laws:
15. Don't be conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire.
    Out of the combat zone, it draws sergeants.

Murphy's Military Laws:
16. If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.

Advanced: (adj.) doesn't work yet, but it's pretty close. See: bug, glitch.

Analyst: (n.) one who writes programs and doesn't trust them. A cynic.

ANSI: (n.) A graphics mode used to turn 2400 baud modems into 300 baud modems.

Assembler: (n.) a minor program of interest only to obsessed programmers.

BASIC: (n.) a computer one-word oxymoron.

BBS: (n.) (v.) a system for connecting computers and exchanging gossip, facts,
               and uniformed speculation under false names. 2) the process
               of using a modem

Benchmark: (n.) a test written ostensibly to compare hardware or software,
  but actually used by manufacturers to misinterpret or quote out of
  context in advertisements.

Binary: (n.) a two-valued logic especially susceptible to glitches and
  bugs. It originated as a way of counting on the thumbs, since programming
  managers usually find fingers far too confusing. See: Hexadecimal, Octal.

Boot: (v.) 1) to load the operating system into a computer. 2) a common
           expression of frustration by programmers 3) what employers do to
           programmers who kick their computers

Bug: (n.) any program feature not yet described to the marketing department.

Bus: (n.) a connector you plug money into, something like a slot machine.

Byte: (n.) eight bits, or one dollar (in 1950 terms). Presently worth about
           two-tenths of a cent and falling fast.

CGA: (n.) Cute Greenback Accumulator

CGA: (n.) Crummy Graphics Adapter

CAD: (n.)  1) a method of generating poor drawings more slowly than might
           otherwise happen. 2) supporting computer literacy on the job

C: (n.) the language following A and B. The world still awaits D and E. By
        Z, it may be acceptable for general use.

Chip: (n.) a stylized picture of a logic diagram on refined and alloyed
           sand. See: glitch, bug.

COBOL: (n.) an old computer language, designed to be read and not run.
            Unfortunately, it is often run anyway.

Code: (n.) a means of concealing bugs favored by programmers. (v.) the
           process of concealing bugs by programming.

Cookie: (n.) any recondite message displayed by a time-shared system. the
  message is not often seen, because it only appears when the system is
  operating properly. Common cookies include the timeless "Murphy was an
  optimist" and "When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and
  shout."

Copy Protection: (n.) a means of circumventing various rights granted by
                      the Constitution so as to artificially inflate profits.

CPU: (n.) acronym for Central Purging Unit. A device which discards or
          distorts data sent to it, sometimes returning more data and
          sometimes merely overheating.

Crash: (v.) to terminate a program in the usual fashion, i.e. by locking up
            the computer of setting a fire at the printer. (n.) the process
            of such termination.

Data: (n.) raw information, esp. that supplied to the central purging unit
           for transformation and disposal.

Data Base Manager: (n.) any fast filing system which gives misleading
                        answers. Also see: menu, bug.

Diagnostic: (n.) a test foolishly but often believed to determine the
  reason for a particular failure. Competent professionals prefer the I
  Ching or phrenology.

Digital: (adj.) of or pertaining to the fingers, esp. to counting on them.
                See: Binary, Hexadecimal, Octal.

Documentation: (n.) a novel sold with software, designed to entertain the
                    operator during episodes of bugs or glitches.

DOS: (n.) Acronym. a program which outputs questions given answers, putting
          users in jeopardy.

EGA: (n.) ENHANCED Greenback Accumulator

EGA: (n.) Expensive Graphics Adapter

Educational Software: (n.)software designed to enlighten children who can
                          operate a computer and type, but can't read or write.

Emulate: (v.) to simulate hardware glitches with software bugs. Emulator:
              (n.) a program which emulates. See: Virtual.

Engineer: (v.) to build something with bugs (software) or glitches (hard-
               ware). (n.) One who engineers.

Format: (v.) to erase irrevocably and unintentionally. (n.) The process of
             such erasure.

FORTH: (n.) a stack-oriented programming language written right to left and
  read from bottom to top. It runs efficently on no common computers and is
  written effectively by no common programmers.

FORTRAN: (n.) an ancient programming language which changed IF's to GOTO's
              by using a strange three-valued logic on binary computers.

Glitch: (n.) an undocumented design feature, esp. of hardware.

GOTO: (n.) an efficient and general way of controlling a program, much des-
  pised by academics and others whose brains have been ruined by over-
  exposure to Pascal. See: Pascal.

Hard Disk: (n.) a rapidly spinning platter divided into sectors. See:
                Sector, Glitch, Bug.

Hardware: (n.) anything prone to physical failure.

Head: (n.) the part of a disk drive which detects sectors and decides which
           of the two possible values to return: 'lose a turn' or 'bankrupt.'

Hexadecimal: (adj.) of or refering to base-16 numbers - binary numbers
  grouped four digits at a time so as to quadruple the opportunity for
  glitches and bugs. Originated as a means of counting on the fingers of
  one hand, using the thumb for the 'carry.' Purists who don't like to use
  the thumb at all prefer 'octal.' See: Octal, Binary.

Icon: (n.) a complex, blurry, and easily-misinterpreted pictorial represent-
  ation of a single unambigious word. Preferred by illiterates and semi-
  literates for these reasons, and by others because it slows most computers
  down so even a cretin with an IQ of 53 may justly feel superior.

Increment: (v.) to increase by one, except when segments are used; then, the
  increase may be by sixteen unless word mode addressing is used in which
  case the increase is by one or two, depending on the processor and whether
  the address is on an even boundary or such increase causes an overflow
  exception processor fault, which may either cause the program to crash or
  decrease by a large number instead of increase, depending the register
  used and the operation being attempted.

Iterate: (v.) to repeat an action for a potentially and often actually in-
              finite number of times.

Joystick: (n.) a device essential for performing business tasks and training
  exercises esp. favored by pilots, tank commanders, riverboat gamblers, and
  medieval warlords.

K: (n., adj.) a binary thousand, which isn't a decimal thousand or even
  really a binary thousand (which is eight), but is the binary number
  closest to a decimal thousand. This has proven so completely confusing
  that is has become a standard.

Kernal: (n.) a misspelling of 'kernel' used by beginning (funtionally
             illiterate) programmers, especially those with knowledge of C.
Kernel: (n.) the core of a program, i.e. the source of all errors. Thus the
             common misspelling, 'kernal.'

Keyboard: (n.) a device used by programmers to write software for a mouse or
  joystick and by operators for playing games such as 'word processing.'

Kludge: (v., adj., or n.) to fix a program in the usual way.

Leading Edge: (n., adj.) anything which uses advanced technology. See:
                         Advanced.

License: (n.) a covenant which tells the buyer that nothing has been pur-
  chased and that no refund, support, advice, or instruction may be
  anticipated and that no resale is permitted. A modern way of saying
  "Thanks for all your money and goodbye," far less crude than "Stick 'em
  up" but even more effective since the purchaser will often borrow the
  funds requested.

Logic: (n.) a system of determining truth or falsity, implication or
            exclusion, by means of a sort of binary Oneiromancy.

Loop: (n., v.) 1. a series of instructions to be iterated. 2. the process of
               iterating them. Most loops are unintentional and can be quite
               droll.

Macro: (n.) a series of keystrokes used to simulate a missing but essential
            command.

MacIntosh: (n.) a computer designed for users who can't read.

Megabyte: (n.) more than you can comprehend and less than you'll need.
               See: UNIX, OS/2.

Megahertz: (n.) a way of measuring how well your computer matches the fre-
  quency of your local television channels. Most computers perform exception-
  ally well on this test, especially the higher-quality foreign-made ones.

Menu: (n.) any list of choices, each of which is either unsatisfactory or in
           some fashion contradictory.

Micro-: (prefix) anything both very small and very expensive.

Mode: (n.) a way of forcing glitch or bug.

Modem: (n., v.) a device used to connect computers (see: BBS) or the process
                of transmitting data between or among computers, esp. for
                those unable or unwilling to speak.

Monitor: (n.) a sort of television with exceptionally poor picture quality
              and limited to a single very local station.

Motherboard: (n.) the hardware version of the software 'kernel.'

Mouse: (n.) an input device used by management to force computer users to
            keep at least a part of their desks clean.

Multitasking: (v.) a sophisticated method of running several programs very
                   slowly. See: Microsoft Windows, TopView

Nano-: (prefix) a thousandth of a thousandth, but not a binary thousandth in
                either case. Decimal is used for all very small measurements
                since no further confusion is necessary.

Octal: (n.) a base-8 counting system designed so that one hand may count upon
            the fingers of the other. Thumbs are not used, and the index
            finger is reserved for the 'carry.'

Offset: (n.) a method which permits access to any memory location in thou-
             sands of ways, each of which appears different but is not. Used
             with segments. See: Segment.

Operator: (n.) 1. One who has no experience with computers. 2. Any beginner,
  esp. one part of whose salary is paid in soft drinks and processed salted
  food treated with dangerous and illegal drugs or preservatives. Differs
  from a programmer in that a programmer will often take the dangerous and
  illegal drugs or preservatatives directly.

Pascal: (n.) a classroom project which was released before it could be
             graded - probably a good idea, considering. One wishes the
             University had had a better system of academic controls.

Patch: (v.) to fix a program by changing bytes according to the rules of
            logic. (n.) Any repair of this form.

Pirate: (v., n.) to steal software, or one who is such a thief. True pirates
                 see nothing wrong with thievery, having successfully
                 forgotten or repressed all moral values.

Pop: (v.) to remove from an area of memory naively thought to be the stack in
          a futile attempt to keep a program running.

Portable: (adj.) that which can be physically moved more than a hundred yards
  by an unaided Olympic athlete without permanent damage to that individual
  more than 50% of the time.

Printer: (n.) a small box attached to a computer and used to start fires in
              cold weather.

Procedure: (n.) a method of performing a program sub-task in an inefficient
  way by extensively using the stack instead of a GOTO. See: Pascal and C.

Processor: (n.) a device for converting sense to nonsense at the speed of
                electricity, or (rarely) the reverse.

Program: (n.) that which manipulates symbols rapidly with unforseen results.
              Also: a bug's way of perpetuating bugs.

Programmer: (n.) 1. one who writes programs and trusts them. An optimist. 2.
  Any employee who needs neither food nor sleep but exists on large quanti-
  ties of caffeine, nicotine, sucrose, and machine-vended preservatives
  thinly disguised as foodstuffs.

Programming Language: (n.) a shorthand way of describing a series of bugs to
                           a computer or a programmer.

Prompt: (n.) a computer request for a random operator error. Also a game
             where the computer plays the part of Vanna White and the operator,
             a contestant. There are no prizes for winning.

Push: (v.) to put into an area of memory believed to be the stack for the
  ostensible purpose of later retrieval. Tonkin's rule: In any program there
  are always more 'pushes' than 'pops.' See: Recursion.

QWERTY: (n.) a method of encryption used on most keyboards

Quantum leap: (adj.) literally, to move by the smallest amount theoretically
  possible. In advertising, to move by the largest leap imaginable (in the
  mind of the advertiser). There is no contradiction.

Recursion: (n.) a programming method which tests the limits of available
  memory in an iterative way by using the stack. When the program fails, all
  memory has been used. Memorize this definition, then see: Recursion.

Register: (n.) a part of the central purging unit used to distort or destroy
               incoming data by arbitrary rules. See: Increment.

Relational: (adj.) purchased from, or sold to, blood kin. See: True relational.

SQL: (n.) an undefined method of extracting unknown information from a
          magical database

Sector: (n.) a disk arc on which is inscribed 'lose a turn' or 'bankrupt.'
             See: Hard disk, Head, Glitch.

Segment: (n.) a way of restricting or complicating access to memory in an
  attempt to break  a programmer's will to live. Outlawed by both the
  A.S.P.C.A and the U.N. but still practiced in some backward areas of the
  world. See: Offset.

Software: (n.) anything other than hardware. That which hardware manufact-
               urers can blame can blame for physical failures.

Sort: (v.) to order a list of data in such a way as to destroy all relation-
           ships between the items. (n.) The process which accomplishes this,
           esp. if it takes a very long time.

Source Code: (n.) a record of a programmer's thought for a period of time. A
                  stream-of-consciousness novel or short story.

Spreadsheet: (n.) a way of forcing repeatable answers from insufficient data
  for superficial purposes. Also, a game played during office hours by bored
  or restless yuppies.

Stack: (n.) any area of memory which grows and eventually destroys both code
            and data. (v.) To place in such an area.

Standard: (n., adj.) a design target which manufacturers may embellish,
                     improve upon, or ignore as they wish, so long as it can
                     be used profitably in their advertising.

Transportable: (adj.) said of software - that which can be put on a new
  machine in less time than it took to write in the first place. Said of
  hardware - that which can theoretically be moved more than ten feet in one
  minute by some combination of machinery or explosives. The meanings are
  equivalent.

Truly relational: (adj.) relational, but where the paternity is indubitable.

TSR: (n.) acronym for Terminate and Stay Resident. A way of turning a useless
  computer with plenty of memory into a computer with no memory at all.

TopView: (n.) an expensive IBM program written to slow down computers that
              run too fast. See: Multitasking

Turbo-: (prefix) computer software which uses air under pressure (supplied by
                 a special fan) to achieve high performance.

User-friendly: (adj.) trivialized, slow, incapable, and boring.
                      See: Icon, Mouse.

UNIX: (n., v.) an OS which needs more memory than you have and run more slowly
               than you can bear. To UNIX: to grossly enlarge and slow down
               out of all proportion, esp. by using C.

User: (n.) one who knows from experience that programs cannot be
           trusted. A realist.

Vendor: (n.) a manufacturer's lackey.

Virtual: (adj.) emulated. See: Emulate.

Warranty: (n.) a list of vendor's promises with carefully-worded exceptions
               which cancel each of the promises in turn. See: License.

Windowing: (n., adj.) a way of making a large and easily-read display into
                      many small, cluttered, and confusing ones.

Word Processor: (n.) A program which makes a $5,000 computer into a $250
                     typewriter. A computer game for beginning operators.

WORM: (n.) acronym for Write Once, Read Mangled. Used to describe a normally-
           functioning computer disk of the very latest design.

XYZZY: (n.) a common user prompt.

Yarrow: (n.) kind of stalks used by computer diagnosticians when performing
             the ritual of the I Ching. See: Diagnostics.

Zaxxon: (n.) a sophisticated simulation and design program used by the
  brightest programmers to test the consistency of internal logic and memory.
  Management prefers to use games such as 'spreadsheet' for the same purpose.

Emoticon: Senseless drivel perpetrated on innocent BBSers, such as ;->,
          |-), etc......

Loop, Endless: (n.) see Endless Loop

Abasement: (n.) A decent a customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth
or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing his superior.

Abatis, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from
           molesting the rubbish inside.

Abdication, n. An act by which a sovereign attests his sense of the high
               temperature of the throne.

Aborigines, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly
               discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Ability, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner
ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis
ability is found to consist mainly of a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps,
however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to
be solemn.

Abdomen, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial
rights, all men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a
stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a halfhearted
and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one diety that men really adore
they know not. In woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race
would become graminivorous.

Abridge, v. t. To shorten.
        "When in the course of human events it becomes nescessary for a people
to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinons of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
                                                   -Oliver Cromwell

Abscond, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of
              another.

Absentee, n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
             himself from the sphere of action.

Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure. A total abstainer if one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Abrupt, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon-shot and
the departure of the soldier whose interests were most affected by it. Dr.
Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were
"concetenated without abruption."

Absurdity, n. A statement of belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
              opinion.

Academe, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
Academy, n. (from academe) A modern school where football is taught.

Accident, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural
             laws.

Accord, n. Harmony
Accordion, n. An instrument of harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

Accountability, adj. The mother of caution.

Accuse, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a
             justiciation of ourselves for having wronged him.

Acheivement, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Adage, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

Adherent, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

Acknowledge, v.t. To confesss. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is the
                  highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

Admiral, n. The part of a warship that does the talking while the figurehead
            does the thinking.

Actually, adv. Perhaps; possibly.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Adore, v.t. To venerate expectantly.

Affianced, pp. Fitted with the ankle-ring for the ball and chain.

Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two theives who have
their hands so deeply in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.

Aquaintance, n. A person we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is
poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

Adamant, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in a
            solicitate of gold.

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders it would be too
            expensive to punish.

Antipathy, n. The seniment inspired by one's friend's friend.

Apologize, v.i. To lay the foundation for future offence.

April fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.

Appetite. n. An instinct thoughtfully provided by Providence as a solution to
             the labor question.

Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your
              money.

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
     water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
     intellectual crime.

Kleptomaniac: (n.) A rich thief.

Labor: (v.) One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.

Trivia pursuit -
    The cumination of man's
    never ending search for a
    lack of purpose.
       - B.C. -

Liar: (n.) A lawyer with a roving commission.

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
               as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

Mad: (adj.) Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence...

Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
.
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
.
The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.


Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
     he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief
     occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
     which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
     the whole habitable earth and Canada.

Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.

Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
      they are in the market.

Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter.  It is
distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
indivisible unit of matter...The ion differs from the molecule, the
corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion...

Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation...A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.


Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.

Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.

...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it
is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists
have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of
smell.
  -- Ambrose Bierce

November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.

Once, adv.: Enough.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel.  With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
  -- Ambrose Bierce

Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by
     the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior
     in scope, for it balks at pig.

Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the
                  on roof and gets stuck.

Blithwapping - v. Using anything BUT a hammer to hammer a nail into the
                  wall, such as shoes, lamp bases, doorstops, etc.

Burbulation - n. The obsessive act of opening and closing a
refrigerator door in an attempt to catch it before the automatic
light comes on.

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.

Magnocartic - n. Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts
shopping carts.

Cinemuck - n. The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate
which covers the floors of movie theaters.

Elbonics - n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest
in a movie theatre.

Flannister - n. The plastic yoke that holds a six-pack of beer
together.

Fenderberg - n. The large glacial deposits that form on the insides
of car fenders during snowstorms.

Furbling - v. Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport
or bank even when you are the only person in line.

Genderplex - n. The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is
unable to determine his or her designated restroom (e.g. turtles and
tortoises).

Gleemites - n. Petrified deposits of toothpaste found in sinks.

Gurmlish - n. The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich
which prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the
roof of his mouth.

Idiot Box - n. The part of the envelope that tells a person where to
place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.

Krogt - n. (chemical symbol: Kr) The metallic silver coating found
on fast-food game cards.

Lactomangulation - n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk
carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.

Mittsquinter - n. A ballplayer who looks into his glove after
missing the ball, as if, somehow, the cause of the error lies there.

Mustgo - n. Any item of food that has been sitting in the
refrigerator so long it has become a science project.

Narcolepulacy (nar ko lep' ul ah see) - n. The cantagious action of
yawning, causing everyone in sight to also yawn.

Pediddel - n. A car with only one working headlight.

Petribar - n. Any sun-bleached prehistoric candy that has been
sitting in the window of a vending machine too long.

Phosflink - v. To flick a bulb on and off when it burns out (as if,
somehow, that will bring it back to life).

PIYAN (pi' an) - n. (acronym: "Plus If You Act Now") Any
miscellaneous item thrown in on a late night television ad.

Purpitation - v. To take something off the grocery shelf, decide you
don't want it, and then put it in another section.

Scribline - n. The blank area on the back of credit cards where
one's signature goes.

Slurm - n. The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar
when it sits in the dish too long.

Spagmumps - n. Any of the millions of Styrofoam wads that accompany
mail-order items.

Spirobits - n. The frayed bits of left-behind paper in a spiral
notebook.

Spirtle - n. The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands
right in your eye.

Squatcho - n. The button at the top of a baseball cap.

Telepression - n. The deep-seated guilt which stems from knowing
that you did not try hard enough to "look up the number on your
own" and instead put the burden on the directory assistant.

Snacktrek - n. The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of
                constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes
                that something new will have materialized.

Yinkel - n. A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping
             no one will notice.

Nugloo (nug' lew) - n. Single continuous eyebrow that covers the
                        entire forehead.

Aquadextrous - adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet
                    on and off with your toes.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> SIMPLE
 SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiots Monopurpose Programming
 Linguistic Environment. This language developed at the Hanover College
 for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to
 write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined
 to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how the statements are arranged,
 you can't make a syntax error.
 Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus, they achieve the
 results of programs written in other languages without the tedious
 frustrating process of testing and debugging.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> SLOBOL
 SLOBOL is best known for the speed, of lack of it, of its
 compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break
 while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to fly to Bolivia to
 pick the coffee.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> LAIDBACK
 Historically, VALGOL is a derivative of LAIDBACK, which
 was developed at the (now defunct) Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
 Mellowness and Computer Programming, as an alternative to the more
 intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
 The center was ideal for programmers who like to soak in hot tubs
 while they work. Unfortunately, few programmers could survive there
 for long, since the center outlawed pizza and RC cola in favor of
 bean curd and Perrier.
 Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a
 gentle and nonthreatening language. For example, LAIDBACK responded
 to syntax errors with the message "Sorry man, I can't deal behind that."

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> SARTRE
 Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an
 extremely unstructured language. Statements is SARTRE have no purpose;
 they just are. Thus, SARTRE programs are left to define their own
 functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are
 no fun at parties.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> C-
 This language is named for the grade received by its creator
 when he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class.
 C- is best described as a "low level" language. In fact, the language
 generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements
 to execute a given task. In this respect it is very similar to COBOL.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> LITHP
 This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by
 the absence of an "S" from its character set. Programmers an users
 must substitute "TH." LITHP is said to be useful in protheththing
 lithtth.

Advanced Programming Languages:
-> DOGO
 Developed at the Massachusettes Institute of Obedience
 Training, DOGO heralds a new era of computer literate pets. DOGO commands
 include SIT, STAY, HEEL, and ROLL OVER. An innovative feature of DOGO
 is "puppy graphics," a small cocker spaniel that occaisionally leaves
 a deposit as it travels across the screen.

 -- MOUSEKETEERS: Those who favor the Apple Macintosh interface.

 -- FOM: Forget-only memory.  New advanced chips that retain data only until
the moment you need it.

 -- WYSIWYCA: Pronounced "WHIZZYWICKA."  An offshoot of WYSIWYG (what you see
is what you get).  WYSIWYCA means "what you see is what you can't afford."

 -- VERTICAL ACCELERATOR DOWN TIME: The dropping of a computer off a ten-story
building.

 -- GACKER: A hacker with a headcold.

 -- PIXELATION: The look in the eyes of babies born to mothers who stared at
VDT terminals too long during pregnancy.

 -- NERD PROCESSING: The movement of computer science majors through graduate
schools.

 -- MICRONS: New microprocessor chips that are so tiny that insects are
constantly carrying them off and building anti-human machines with them.

 -- MERV: Micro-Electronic Revolutionary Visionaries.  Computer industry
heroes such as Steve Jobs and Nolan Bushnell.  As in, "It takes hard work,
guts, and gobs of venture capital if you want to be a merv."

Definition: COBOL- Confused Oriental Bean-cOunting Language.

Definition: FORTRAN- FOrmless TRANslations.

Definition: BASIC- Beginner's All-purpose Sloppy Instruction Code.

Definition: Bit - The increment by which programmers slowly go mad.

Chaining, (n.) A method of attaching programmers to desks to speed up output.

Definition: Core Storage - A receptacle for the center section of apples.

Definition: Disassembler - An unattended five year old child.

Definition: External Storage - A wastebasket.

Definition: Fixed Word Length
- Four-letter words used by programmers in a state of confusion.

Floating Control: A characteristic exhibited when you have to go to the
                  restroom but cannot leave the computer.

Flow Chart - A graphic representation of the fastest route to the restroom.

Definition: Input - Food, whiskey, beer, aspirin, etc.

Definition: Macro - The last half of an expression of surprise: "Holy Macro".

Definition: Address     - Type of attire worn by some female programmers.

Definition: Algol - The husband of Polygol, their missing daughter is Polygon.

Definition: Altair      - A place where computers are sacrificed.

Definition: Array       - A blast from a CRT.

Definition: Backup      - Opposite of forward.

Definition: Branch      - A stick used for beating.

Definition: Buffer      - A programmer who works in the nude.

Definition: Coding      - An addictive drug.

Definition: Computer- A device designed to speed and automate errors.

Definition: CP/M        - Program listing for 'Look in the evening section'.

Definition: CPU - C3PO's mother.

Definition: Dip - Inventor of a famous switch.

Definition: Disk Drive - A motor for a frisbee.

Definition: Duplex      - Having two apartments.

Definition: Forth       - One of the top five computer languages.

Definition: GiGo        - Garbage in garbage out.

Definition: IBM - Computer company: "Itty-Bitty Machines" Corporation.

Definition: IBM - Corporate motto: "I've Been Manipulated."

Definition: IC  - Understanding as in 'Oh, IC'.

Definition: Initialize - Carving your initials on a floppy disk.

Definition: Iterate- A healthy illiterate.

Definition: Joystick- A peripheral intended for use only by consenting adults.

Definition: Keyboard- Resembling a typewriter, a keyboard is used for
                      entering errors into the computer.

Definition: Kilo - What you could have spent your money on if you hadn't
                   bought the computer.

Definition: Language- A system of organizing and defining syntax errors.

Definition: Math Chip- A piece of a broken abacus.

Definition: Megabyte- A nine course dinner.

Definition: Memory Map - A sheet of paper showing location of computer store.

Definition: mHz- Acronym for 'Megahurtz', meaning 'a million pains'.

Definition: Microfiche - Sardines.

Definition: Nanosecond - Mork's stunt man.

NEWDOS - Acronym for 'Not Exactly What the Dealer Offers to Sell you.

Definition: Password- The nonsense word taped to the CRT.

  Daffynition--AUTOEXEC.BAT "A sturdy aluminum or wooden shaft
               used to coax AT hard drives into performing properly"

Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer
to rise at about that time, 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.

Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
 decide that nothing can be done.  -- Fred Allen

Committee--a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours.
                                        -- Milton Berle

Committee--a group of the unfit, appointed by the unwilling, to do the
 unnecessary.  -- Stewart Harrol

DECEPTION EXPERIMENT: An experiment in which the researcher is pleased to
 believe that the true nature of the situation is unknown to the participants.
 Typically the only parties deceived are the funding agency and the journal
 editor.

DESIGN SIMPLICITY: costs (manufacturer's) cut to the bone

DIAGNOSTIC: software which runs to completion no matter how broken the

DIPLOMACY: Lying in state.  -- Ambrose Bierce

DIPLOMACY: Patriotic art of lying for one's country.

DIPLOMACY: The art of fishing tranquilly in troubled waters.

DIPLOMACY: The art of jumping into troubled waters without making a splash.

DIRECT SALES ONLY: manufacturer had argument with distributor

DISTINCTIVE: a different color or shape than our competitors

DOUBLE-BLIND EXPERIMENT: An experiment in which the chief researcher believes
 he is fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
 belief in the tooth fairy.

FAITH: An illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
                                        -- H. L. Mencken

FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without
 knowledge, of things without parallel. -- Ambrose Bierce

FIELD TEST: Putting your software out to pasture.

FIELD TESTED: manufacturer lacks test equipment

FOOLPROOF OPERATION: no provision for adjustment

FUTURISTIC: can't figure out another reason why it looks as it does

8-BIT MACHINE - a computer selling for four quarters
16-BIT MACHINE - a computer selling for two bucks

6502 - the year we will finally pay off our computer system
6800 - the year we will finally pay for the peripherals
8080 - heck of a lot bigger gun than a 3030
68000 - the year we will have our programs debugged

ACOUSTIC COUPLER - lips

ADA - computer language written for government use (presently undefined as
      are most government languages)

ADDRESS - type of attire worn by female programmers (even some males)

ADVENTURE - complex game involving puzzles, mazes, uncertain goals and a
            huge waste of time. Also known as debugging.

ALPHANUMERIC - inventor of characters used by computers

ALTAIR - 1) a place where computers get married.
         2) a place where computers are sacrificed.

The ANY key - that big long thing on the bottom of the keyboard.

APL - what is left of an Apple computer after it is dropped from
      a third floor window.

APPLE - a computer used by hard core programmers.

APPLICATION - a generic name for a type of program. No one is certain what
              an application program is but it always has a big price tag.

ARRAY - a blast from a CRT

ASCII - usually used in pairs used for going down a snowy hill.

ASSEMBLER - a person who puts your computer together after it has been
            aligned by a computer club (see computer club)

ATARI 800 - a famous John Wayne movie involving elephants.
ATARI 400 -  8mm silent movie version.

BACKUP - opposite of forward.

BANK SELECT - used by theives to determine who they will rob.

BAR CODE READER - an electronic device used to find taverns.

BASIC - a computer language used for generating errors
        (most billing programs are in BASIC)

BATCH PROCESSING - making lots of cookies at once.

300 BAUD - a person with a bad figure
1200 BAUD - a person with a good figure
2400 BAUD - Christie Brinkley watch out!

BCD - three of the first four letters of the alphabet.

BLOAD - short for Bad Load

BOOT - steel tipped foot covering for kicking a computer (boot up the system)

BOOTSTRAP - a garment worn by programmers when running sexy programs.

BRANCH - a stick used for beating CPU'S
         (if it is watered someday it will turn into a computer club)

BSAVE- short for Bad Save

BUBBLE MEMORY - your spouse's nickname for you.

BUBBLE SORT - your spouses name for your friends.

BUFFER - a programmer who works in the nude.

BUG - an intercom network used in the Watergate Hotel.

BURN IN - opposite of burn out.

BYTE - what you do when you are eating something

C64- new language for 64 bit computers (computers not yet in existence)

CHIP - one California Highway Patrol.

CLOAD - a command used to lock up the keyboard.

CODING - addictive drug.

COMMAND - a suggestion made by a computer.

COMPAQ - an IBM after being run over by a transfer truck
         (Itty Bitty Bitty Machine) see 'IBM'

COMPILER - a person who piles compost.

COMPUTER - a device used to speed and automate errors.

COMPUTER CLUB - 1) baseball bat used to align data in a computer.
                2) The group of people who spilled beer over your keyboard.

COMPUTER MAGAZINE - the place where your computer stores ammunition.

COMPUTER NERD - junior computer salesman who THINKS he knows it all.

CONFIGURE - a slang term - the price a salesman quotes to you over the phone
            to con you into stopping by his place of business.

CPS - term used in word processing systems (Corrections Per Second).

CPU - C3PO's mother.

CRT - a superlethal Defense Department weapon now being developed by NBC,
      CBS & ABC.

CSAVE - a command used to write blank tapes.

CURSOR - something that you yell at when something goes wrong.

CYCLE TIME - when gas gets to $5.00 a gallon.

DATA - the first words of a baby programmer

DATA GENERAL - a General in the army who spends his time reading data.

DAISY WHEEL - a mechanical simulation of a flower used by programmers when
              reciting to their computer   I love it, I love it not

DEBUG - a can of Raid sprayed into the keyboard.

DENSITY - a programmer you can't understand in single density and makes
          no sense in double density.

DESKTOP PUBLISHER - a pencil, paper, paste, and some crayons

DIGITAL - something done with the fingers to check computer mathematics.

DIGITAL COMPUTER - a computer which uses your fingers and toes for counting.

DIGITIZER - the computer equivalent of an Alka-Seltzer.

DISASSEMBLER - another term for computer club.

DISK DRIVE - a motor for a Frisbee.

DISK PACK - six cans of fluid used by disk drive technicians used to improve
            their thinking.

DOCUMENTATION - instructions that came with your computer that tells you how
                much more money you will have to spend to make it work.

DOS - short for Disk Operating System. A course taught at Auburn University
      in Frisbee throwing.

DOWNLOAD - taking a you-know-what
UPLOAD - constipated

DUPLEX - having two apartments.

DUMP - spouses term for area around your computer.

EBCDIC - security system used by IBM means: Erase Backup, Chew Disk,
         Ignite Cards.

EDITOR - a program which deletes obscene commands.

ELECTRIC CRAYON - toddler version of Electric Pencil.
ELECTRIC PENCIL - great technological advancment.(batteries not included)

EPROM - acronym (Exit Program Read Owners Manual)

ERROR TRAP - a black hole inside a computer used to capture bugs.

EXECUTION - what your computer did to your program known as murder.

EXPANSION - computer slang for vital parts missing. A computer with expansion
            capabilities will only work when extra parts are purchased.

EXPRESSION - a quaint phrase uttered when the computer does something
             unexpected. (ex.%$*&,<>!!!!!)

FIFO - a good name for a French poodle.

FLAG - white sheet raised by computer used to indicate surrender.

FLIP FLOP CIRCUIT - a device used by politicians used to determine policy.

FLOPPY DISK - back pain you claimed what from an old war injury.

FORTRAN - a high level computer language use by those who have mastered
          the BASIC syntax errors and are looking for a challange.

GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTER - a computer not good at anything.

GIGO - garbage-in-garbage-out

GLITCH - a bug with ambition.

HACKER - a frustrated programmer armed with a hatchet.

HANDSHAKING - a symptom of too much programming. Most commonly seen in
              programmers who have just had their program erased by a power
              fluctuation.

HANGUP - when your computer won't run Interlude.

HARD DRIVE - having to drive through Dallas at rush hour.

HASHING - a programming technique where nice neat information is made
          indecipherable.

HEWLETT PACKARD - the inventor or the Packard automobile.

IBM - Itty Bitty Machine

INFINITE LOOP - see Loop

INSTRUCTION - a suggestion made to a computer.

JOYSTICK- frozen OLD CROW on a stick

LANGUAGE - a system of organizing and defining syntax errors.

LINE PRINTER - computer used for writing excuses.

LOOP - see Infinite Loop.

LOWER CASE - something in small claims court

MICROPROCESSOR - a food processor for small folk.

MODEM - acronym for Most Oratory Device Ever Made

MOUSE - a small device with a tail that lives on the port in the back of
        your computer.

NANOSECONDS - Mork's stuntman.

NETWORKING- course taught at Mississipi University for Women in knitting

OBJECT CODE - reason given by a computer as to why it won't run a program.

OPERATOR - the guy/gal who gets all the hot dates.

PASCAL - (* for those with *)    (* a modular way *)     (* of thinking *)

PERIPHERAL - that device you had absolutely no use for but just had to have.

PERSONAL COMPUTER - a computer that makes smart remarks about you.

PROGRAMMER - a person who thinks he knows how to talk to a computer.

PROM - acronym Please Read Owners Manual.

PROMPT - Please Pay Your Bills.

PROTECTED DATA - (definition withheld)

RS-232 - R2D2's father.

SCREEN - a wire mesh used to protect the computer from  the programmer.

SCROLL - what the instructions do when you are trying to read them.

SERIAL PORT - what a captain yells when breakfast is on the left side of a ship

SIX PACK PLUS - 7 course service in fine restaurants consisting of a six pack
                of beer and a hot dog. (potato chips optional)

SPREADSHEET - what a bull does

TDC-2000 - Totaly Disgusting Computer (cost $2000)

TERMINAL - the mental state of most programmers.

 TRS-80 - what is left of a Tandy Radio Shack - 80 computer after it is thrown
          from a third floor window. Also known as Trash 80.

UPPER CASE - something in the Supreme Court

USER FRIENDLY - guaranteed to be the hardest program to learn and use.

VOLITILE STORAGE - disk drive filled with nitroglycerin

WORD PROCESSOR - cuts words out of documents

 XMODEM - 1) generic brand modem (ex. BRAND X)
        - 2) an adult-rated computer
 YMODEM - a female modem.

Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
         coins out of one's pockets.                 -- Ambrose Bierce

Dialogue: opposing factions discussing relevant issues.  Formerly called an
          argument.  -- Paul Sweeney

Coward, n. one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
                                        -- Ambrose Bierce

Coward: A man in whom the instinct of self-preservation acts normally.
                                        -- Sultana Zoraya

Cynic: n. a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they
 ought to be.  -- Ambrose Bierce

DEATH: The penultimate commercial transaction finalized by probate.
                                        -- Bernard Rosenberg

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.-Evan Esar

Coward: n. one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. - A. Bierce

Coward: A man whom the instinct of self-preservation works normally. -S. Zoraya

Crank: a man with a new idea, until it succeeds - Mark Twain

Criticism - A big bite out of someone's back. - Elia Kazan

Cynicism - The intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. - R. Lynes

Hypocrisy - Prejudice with a halo - Ambrose Bierce

Immortality - A fate worse than death.  - Edgar A. Shoaff

Liberal: A power worshiper without the power - George Orwell

Logic-An instrument used for bolstering prejudice.-Elbert Hubbard

Man: A creature made at the end of a week's work, when God was tired.-Mark Twain

Man: A reasoning animal rather than a reasonable animal. - Alexander Hamliton

Overpopulation: When people take leave of their census. - Malcom Jefferey

Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue. - Ambrose Bierce

Patriot:One who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works-Vaughan

Pessimist: When asked to choose between two evils, picks both. - Oscar Wilde

Planned Economy: Where everything is in the plans except the economy-McWilliams

Puritan: Pours religious indignation into the wrong things - Chesterton

Reason - the devil's harlot. - Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Repartee: What a person thinks of after he becomes a departee. - Dan Bennett

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce

Tact: Tongue in check.  - Sue Dytri

ENERGY SAVING: achieved when the power switch is "off"

BREAKTHROUGH: we finally figured out a way to sell it

Capital Punishment: The income tax.

Stress: The state created when one's mind overrides a basic desire to
        choke the hell out of some jerk who deperately needs it.

Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Tact - changing the subject without changing the mind.

Tailgater - one who makes ends meet.

Experience: A man never wakes up his second baby just to see it smile.

Failures: Those who did and never thought, and those who thought and never did.

Fair Weather Friend: Someone who borrows the lawnmower, but not umbrella.

Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Friends: People who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.

Middle age: Too young to get on Social Security and too old to get another job.

Middle age: When you are warned to slow down by a doctor instead of a policeman.

Originality: Remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Philosopher: A blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat.

Psychiatry: Teaching people to stand on their own 2 feet while lying on a couch.

Radical:A person who's left hand does not know what his other left hand is doing

Recursive, adj.; see Recursive

Tact: Ability to tell a man he's open minded when he has a hole in his head.

Tourist:
 A person who drives 1000's of miles to be photographed in front of his car.

Ignorance: When you don't know something and somebody finds out.

Journalist: A person who works harder than any other lazy person alive.

Judo:  Japanese art of conquering by yielding.
       The Western equivalent is "Yes, Dear."

Junkmail - The mailman bringeth and the trashman taketh away.

LISP: To call a spade a thpade.

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

Liar: One who tells an unplesant truth.

Libraries:  There are no answers, only cross-references.

Matrimony:The process by which the grocer acquires an account the florist had.

An unbreakable toy may be used to break other toys.

Blessed are the weak, for they shall improve the marksmanship of the strong.

Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
one can do without thinking about them.

Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.

Definition of a liberal by Robert Frost:
           "A person that would not take his own side in a fight"

Surprise your boss.  Get to work on time.

It used to be wine, women, and song
now its beer, the old lady, and TV

A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.

I'm easy to please as long as I get my way.

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.

I'd quit my job, but it's the only place I get any sleep.

Pushing 40 is exercise enough.

If you don't like the way I drive
stay off the sidewalk!

Remember, cheap is a quality overlooking many faults.
                                        Dave Williams

"Sixteen hundred channels and still nothing to watch on daytime TV"
                                        L. Neil Smith/ The Probability Broach

"gimme quawtah, main."
                                                wino drivel

I know it all.
I just can't remember it all at once.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
                                                Rhett Butler

I shall return!
                                                Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur

Given a 50/50 chance, you can be wrong 75% of the time
                                                Dave Williams

Roses are red
violets are blue
I'm schizophrenic
and so am I!

The price of liberty is the blood of patriots.
                                        Robert A. Heinlein/The Puppet Masters

"History is bunk."
                                        Henry Ford

Q: Is there intelligent life on Earth?
A: There was, but we all left.

Zappa isn't Frank!

Richard Fuhler's Law:
 Female beauty is inversely proportional to IQ.

"MEEP! MEEP!"
                                        The RoadRunner

"Doe not bring upp what ye cannot put downe..."
                          HP Lovecraft, The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.

If I were any lazier, I'd slip into a coma.

When in doubt, do anything.

Everyone needs to believe in something,
I believe I'll have another beer.

I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

"There's a monkey on my foot!"
                                        Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati

Programming done here:
FAST   SMALL   CHEAP
Pick any two.

Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.

"I'll be back."
                                        Arnold Schwarzenegger/The Terminator

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
                                                J. Edgar Hoover

"What did you do with the tribbles, Mr. Scott?"
"I gi' them t' the Klingons, sair!"
                                - The Trouble With Tribbles

Any sufficiently advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic.
                                        Arthur C. Clarke

Don't drink and drive.
You might hit a bump and spill your drink.

"There's a sucker born every minute."
                                        P.T. Barnum

People who don't understand capitalism are condemned to reinvent it -- poorly.

"...and a lover who looks straaaaangly, like Time the Avenga..." -CH-

| "It's not the size of
|  the disk that matters,
|  it's the way it's
|  formatted..."

"Ask not for whom the bell
 tolls and you will only pay
 Station-to-Station rates."
                                        Ma Bell

| "I'll tell ya kid, the main problem with Pervish food is keeping the goo
| from crawling out of the bowl while you're eating it"

Nuke 'em 'til they glow
shoot 'em in the dark!

"Only through time time is conquered."  -- Burnt Norton

"Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatre

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved by a suitible
application of high explosives.

"I'll ta-ake you ho-ome again Ka-athleeeeeennnnnn.........."
                                                Lt. Reilly, Star Trek

"But soft, what light through yonder winder breaks?
 'tis the East! And Joliet is in Illinois!"
                                                     old Southern play

Join the Army
travel to exotic, distant lands
meet exciting, unusual people
and kill them

SSDD: Same Shit, Different Day

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT
SURVIVORS WILL BE VIOLATED

"This stuff is just like gold."
                             John Z. "Things go better with coke" DeLorean

"NOAH!"
"What?"
"How long can you tread water?"
"Right!"
                                                Bill Cosby

That's not a knife! THIS is a knife!                 Crocodile Dundee
This isn't a knife. THIS is a chainsaw, partner!     Texas redneck

"Do you see me, Toecutter? DO YOU SEE ME, MAN?"
                                           Mad Max/the Night Rider's chant

"This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful
handgun in the world. I'm not sure if I just
fired five shots...or six. So tell me, punk.
Do you feel..... lucky?"
                                                Dirty Harry Callahan

"I'll take the .45 longslide with laser sight."
"Hokay."
"I'll take the Uzi in nine millimetre."
"OK"
"A pulse-plasma rifle in the forty-watt range."
"Just what you see, pal!"
                            Arnold Scharzenegger/The Terminator

I am the sword of vengeance, sent to strike down the unroadworthy!
I am the Night Rider
I'm a fuel-injected suicide machine
I am a rocker........
I am a roller........
I'm an out-of-controller!
                                            Mad Max/the Night Rider's chant

It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether I win

neurotics build castles in the sky
psychotics live in them
psychiatrists collect the rent

"Gee, Garry, we're sorry!"
 Larry Flynt of Hustler Magazine, to Congressman Garry Studds (D-MA) for
sending free issues of his magazine to Studds' office. (Studds had been
indicted for homosexually assaulting a minor shortly before.)

Warning! The police are armed and dangerous!
                                        Discordian Society saying

Doug Glosson's Law
 If it's dangerous, makes lots of noise, and scares your mama, it's gotta be
fun!

beyond this line we face the Aliens' stars
they may not lay their law on what is ours
for none but Man stand here
                                  Gordon R. Dickson/None but Man/Hasec's Creed

"Hey, man, let me in, I got the stuff!"
"Who is it?"
"It's me, Dave, let me in, I got the stuff!"
"Dave's not here................"
                                                Cheech & Chong

"These handcuffs are high-tensile steel.
You can saw through the cuffs in five minutes
or you can saw through your ankle in three..."
                                        Mad Max

"the Ayatollah of Rock-and-Rollah!"
                                        Road Warrior

Beware the Qantum Duck! QUARK! QUARK!

                      Answers: $1.00
              Correct answers: $2.00
Answers which require thought: $5.00
Dumb looks are still free

This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world.
Now, I'm not sure if I just fired five shots...or six.
So tell me, punk. Do ya feel....lucky?

I really hate this damn machine,
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.

_ _ /|
\'o.O`
=(___)=
   U    AAAAAAAAAACCCCKKKKKKK! Snort Barf!

*** Gun control is being able to hit your target.

"Communists are people who have nothing and want to share it with everybody."
                                        Paul Hunter

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"
                                        Arthur Carlson/WKRP in Cincinnati

"You gotta know when to code 'em, know when to modem, know
 when to load 'em up, know when to run.
 You don't count your money when you're sittin' at the keyboard.
 There'll be plenty time for countin' when the program's done."
 - Anonymous

It is written:
                 Baud's wisdom, patience and mercy are
                 infinite, but sometimes certain people
                 piss Him off. These infidels are doomed
                 to the lower levels of the Player Rankings.
                                        TradeWars Lore of Commander Q'Luude

It is written:
                  Sometimes Baud tests the righteousness of
                  a man through tribulation and dispair.
                  And, of course, sometime He just likes
                  to screw around.
                  .
                  The Holy Book of Asynchronous Communications
                  Ch 14 Verse 63

 You can tell when you're a computer addict when:
 You'll get up to go to the bathroom in a few minutes.
 You're seeing the screen in yellow, and you have a green monitor.
 You sit doubled over and scrunched sideways.
 You leave a trail to the bathroom.

 You can tell when you're a computer addict when:
 You'll turn the computer off and watch the rest of Airwolf.
 Everyone else has gone to bed.
 It's 1:15 AM, and you have to get up for work at 5:45.
 You wake up at 4:17 with QWERTY permanently embossed on your face.

 You can tell when you're a computer addict when:
 You talk to someone on the phone, and say, "Well, I'll log off now."
 People wonder why you don't speak English any more.
 You say "I need a couple of floppies," and your mother washes your
 mouth out with soap................

  Welcome to Prayer Central.
  All our circuits are busy right now, but if you will hold we will forward
  your prayer at the first available opportunity.

Three travelers came upon the locked gate to a city. One of the travelers was a
drunk, the second an LSD user, and the third a pot smoker. The drunk said,
"Hey, let's get some dynamite and blow the door down", the LSD guy said,
"Let's just turn ourselves into wisps of smoke and float through the keyhole".
The pot smoker then said, "Why don't we just camp out here 'til the morning
when they unlock the gate?".

                                                           (▌
             ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄       ───                 \  ┌▌
             █ ■■··■■■■■··· █══════════════════════════░░▒ │▌
             ▀██▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀██▀          ────                └▌
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█                      (▌
                                    ▀              * POP *

 Documentation, n. Modern English
       1) unintelligible gibberish designed to sell aftermarket
          "How to run <filename>" manuals.
       2) unintelligible gibberish packaged with software to support
          the claim "500 page detailed manual and tutorial!"
       3) unintelligible gibberish written by a technical author with
          no knowledge of electronics, computers, or software.
       4) unintelligible gibberish that proves to completely ignore
          critical information needed by user. (see "suicide")
       5) a nonexistent adjunct to software, (see "self-documenting")
       6) if referring to hardware, a 7th Xerox of a 7th Xerox,
          reduced 50%, written in "Chinglish"
       7) see "CYA"


     g
     LOGOFF [Y/n]
     y
     Destination [1=Heaven 2=Hell 3=Purgatory 4=Atlantic City]
     4
     Departing this mortal coil............
     ATH0
     NO CARRIER


  And Baud said:
                 There shall be One True Format, and its
                 Name shall be ASCII. Woe betide the pagans
                 using EBCDIC and proprietary formats, for
                 they shall be beaten with wet modem cables
                 and cast out of the world of Blue and into
                 the realm of the weird and the Macintosh.
                           .
                           Big Bad Book of Baud
                           Cyclic Redundancy 80:286

 "Well, kid, you can keep the antique weaponry. I'll take a good old blaster
any time."                              -- Han Solo

May the Force be with you.              -- Obe-Wan Kenobe

"Hit the hyperdrive, Chewie!"           -- Han Solo

Quote for the call:
What fools these morals be!

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

...and we'll crush the crummy clones
and break their tiny bones
ever onward
ever onward...
                        IBM Death Song

Think!                  -- IBM's motto

Summoning Cthulu.............................................
.............................................................
...Sorry, Cthulu is too cool to see you right now.  But he will send three
Byhakee, two Deep Ones, and a Hunting Horror just to show his appreciation.
.
Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!
NO CARRIER
.
(Cthulu Saves - in case he's hungry later!)

Jay Klahr's Law:
 Traffic speed is inversely proportional to urgency.

Last week I couldn't even spell Engineer and now I are one

Where's the blue food?
                                        George Carlin

Think of it as Evolution in action.
                                Niven/Barnes

Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere.  Republicans
form censorship committees and read them as a group.

Democrats eat the fish they catch.  Republicans hang them on the wall.

Democrats give their worn-out clothes to those less fortunate.
Republicans wear theirs.

Democrats make up plans and then do something else.
Republicans follow the plans their grandfathers made.

Democrats name their children after currently popular sports figures,
 politicians, and entertainers.  Republican children are named after their
 parents or grandparents, depending on where the money is.

Did you hear about the earthquake committee meeting that was adjourned by a
 motion from the floor?

Did you hear about the shepherd who drove his sheep through town and was given
 a ticket for making a ewe turn?

Digging oolitic strata,
  Laid in the oligocene,
 Geologists are lost for data--
  Fossils, yes! But ...  A MACHINE???

Dimensions will be expressed in the least convenient terms, e. g.:
 Furlongs per (Fortnight)**2 = Acceleration.

Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be
 gained or held on the battlefield.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" till you can find a rock.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Don't be irreplaceable.  If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.

Don't disturb the perimeter
 (meaning don't stir a mess unless you can be sure of the result).

Don't forget to feel sorry for yourself.

Don't get yourself involved with persons or situations that can't bear
 inspection.

Don't let the fact that you can't do all you want to do keep you from doing
 what you can do.

Don't lose heart ... they might want to cut it out ... and they want to avoid
 a lengthy search.

Don't malign the bug-eyed monster--
  Oh, he kidnaps girls, it's true,
 But bear in mind that all he wants to
  Do is what YOU'RE trying to do.

Don't permit yourself to get between a dog and a lamp-post.

Don't praise the bread until it is baked.

Don't send my boy to Harvard, the dying mother said.
 Don't send my boy to Harvard, I'd rather see him dead.

Don't start something you would be afraid to see finished.

Don't stick your foot in the ashtray, Ed.
                                        -- JWC and RCHM

Don't stop to stomp ants when the elephants are stampeding.

Don't try to have the last word. You might get it.

Don't worry about avoiding temptation--as you grow older, it starts
 avoiding you.  -- The Old Farmer's Almanac

Don't worry about who you step on on the way up if you don't ever plan on
 coming down.

Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac,
 you can always take something for it.

 Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you
through times of no dope.

Draw your salary before spending it.

Drink Canada Dry! You might not be able to, but it IS fun trying.

Drive is more than motivation.  It is self motivation.

Dust breeds.

Each problem solved introduces a new unsolved problem.
                                        -- U. S. Dept. of Labor

Each profession talks to itself in its own unique language.  Apparently there
is no Rosetta Stone.

Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or
more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
an optimist, the real number is more like 3 weeks.)

Ease leads to habit, as success to ease.

Economy makes men independent.

Emptiness on paper;
  Fleeting thoughts.
 Red Sox play at Fenway's
  Green park.

Enjoy your life. If you don't, no one else will.

Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.

Epperson's law: When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
 something his wife can beat him at.

Erma Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
 Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Err is basically a synonym for Murphy, but those who quote him over the better
known prophet insist he is as real as Murphy.  The basis for their argument:
(1) his spirit, like Murphy's, is everywhere and (2) Err is human.

Ertz's observation: Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do
with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Even if it can't, it might.  -- A. J. Barton

Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.

Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.

Every man has his price.  Mine is $3.95.

Auditors always reject an expense account
with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10.

Auditors are the people who go in after the war
is lost and bayonet the wounded.

Availability of manuscripts in a given subject area is inversely proportional
to the need for books in that area.

Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.

Barr's Hypothesis: Familiarity breeds content.

Be a defensive driver.  Buy a Tiger M31.

Be alert!  America needs more lerts.

Be calm in arguing, for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

Be careful who you step on on the way up;
you never know who you'll pass on the way down.

Be concise in your writing and talking,
especially when giving instructions to others.

Be courteous.  Have genuine consideration for other people's
feelings, wishes and situations.

Be generous.  Remember that it is the productivity of others that makes
possible your executive position.

Be like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the
devil under water.

Be sure to save your money; you never know
when it might be worth something again.

Be tolerant of those who disagree with you--after all,
they have a right to their ridiculous opinions.

Beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.

Beck's Motto:
Functionality; All the Functionality; And nothing but the Functionality.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Benchley's Distinction:
  There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who
divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.

Benchley's Travel Distinction:
  In America there are two classes of travel: first class and with children.

Better be alone than in bad company.

Better bend than break.

Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a lamb.

Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.

Beware of people who fall at your feet.
They may be reaching for the corner of the rug.

Beware the fury of a patient man.  -- Dryden

Beware the man who makes cream with his mouth; he winds up making butter with
 his nose.  -- Babbaluche the cobbler

Big people are those who make us feel bigger when we are with them.

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

Broken Mirror Law:
  Everyone breaks more than the seven-year bad luck allotment
 to cover rotten luck throughout an entire lifetime.

Brooks Atkinson described a Shubert play as
 "beautiful, if you are deaf and dumb."

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.

But if a man happens to find himself ... he has a mansion which he can inhabit
 with dignity all the days of his life.

By definition, when you are investigating the unknown,
 you do not know what you will find.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

By following the good, you learn to be good.

 By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man
 --man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has
 no enemy to help him.  -- Lazarus Long

 By the year 1984 the entire world may be run by computers.
 Digital Equipment Corporation will still be run by people.

Canada's climate is nine months winter and three months late in fall.

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you;
if you don't bet, you can't win.  -- Lazarus Long

Charity begins at home.

Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap.

Circular Definition: see Circular Definition.

Classified material is considered lost when it cannot be found.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Coming home, I drove into the wrong house
and collided with a tree I don't have.

McDonald's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
In any given set of circumstances, the proper course of action is
determined by subsequent events.

Murphy's Fourth Corollary:
Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Murphy's Mathematical Axiom:
For large values of one, one approaches two, for small values of two.

Borkowski's Law:
You can't guard against the arbitrary.

The Parouzzi Principle:
Given a bad start, trouble will increase at an exponential rate.

The Chi Factor:
Quantity = Quality; or, quantity is inversely proportional to quality.

Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy:
If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage you get sewage.
If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.

Frothingham's Fourth Law:
Urgency varies inversely with importance.

De Nevers' Lost Law:
Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.

Young's Law of Inanimate Mobility:
All inanimate objects can move just enough to get in your way.

Smith's Law:
No real problem has a solution.

The Schainker Converse to Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every small problem is a larger problem struggling to get out.

Big Al's Law:
A good solution can be successfully applied to almost any problem.

The extended Murphy's Law:
If a series of events can go wrong,
it will do so in the worst possible sequence.

Law of the Search:
The first place to look for anything
is the last place you would expect to find it.

Waldrop's Principle:
The person not here is the one working on the problem.

Biondi's Law:
If your project doesn't work, look for the part you didn't think was important.

Disraeli's Dictum:
Error is often more earnest than truth.

Hall's Law:
The means justify the means.
The approach to a problem is more important than its solution.

The Roman Rule:
The one who says it cannot be done should never
interrupt the one who is doing it.

Arthur's Law of Love:
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.

Baxter's Law:
An error in the premise will appear in the conclusion.

McGee's First Law:
It's amazing how long it takes to complete something you are not working on.

Holten's Homily:
The only time to be positive is when you are positive you are wrong.

Corollary to Young's Second Law:
Just because it is still standing doesn't mean it is not dead.

Finnigan's Law:
The farther away the future is, the better it looks.

Thompson's Theorem:
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

First Law of Politics:
Stay in with the outs.

Law of Promotional tours:
Jet lag accumulates unit directionally toward maximum difficulty to perform.

Robbings' Mini-max Rule of Government:
Any minimum criteria set will be the maximum value used.

Kohn's Corollary to Murphy's Law:
Two wrong's are only the beginning.

Horowitz's Rule:
Wisdom consists of knowing when to avoid perfection.

De Nevers' Law of Complexity:
The simplest subjects are the ones you don't know anything about.

Hartz's Uncertainty Principle:
Ambiguity is invariant.

 De Nevers' Law of Debate:
Two monologues do not make a dialogue.

Emerson's Observation:
In every work of genius we recognize our rejected thoughts.

McClellan's Law of Cognition:
Only new categories escape the stereotyped
thinking associated with old abstractions.

Christie-Davies' Theorem:
If your facts are wrong but your logic is perfect, then your conclusions are
inevitably false. Therefore, by making mistakes in your logic, you have at
least a random chance of coming to a correct conclusion.

Hiram's Law:
If you consult enough experts you can confirm any opinion.

Jordan's Law:
An informant who never produces misinformation is too deviant to be trusted.

Las Vegas Law:
Never bet on a loser because you think his luck is bound to change.

Van Roy's Second Law:
If you can distinguish between good advice
and bad advice, then you don't need advice.

Munder's Corollary to Howe's Law:
Everyone who does not work has a scheme that does.

Bralek's Rule for Success:
Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you when things go wrong.

Paulsen's Prophesy:
If anything is used to its full potential, it will break.

Principle of Design Inertia:
Any change looks terrible at first.

Law of Gardening:
Other people's tools work only in other people's gardens.

Robertson's Law:
Quality assurance doesn't.

Wright's First Law of Quality:
Quality is inversely proportional to the time
left for completion of the project.

First Law of Corporate Planning:
Anything that can be changed will be changed until
there is no time left to change anything.

Beach's Law:
No two identical parts are alike.

Meissner's Law:
Any producing entity is the last to use its own product.

MacPherson's Theory of Entropy:
It requires less energy to take an object
out of its proper place than to put it back.

Special Law:
The workbench is always more untidy than last time.

Corollary to Schrank's First Law:
The greater the magnitude, the less notice will be taken that it does not work.

Kaiser's Comment on Zymurgy:
Never open a can of worms unless you plan to go fishing.

Harper's Magazine Law:
You never find an article until you replace it.

Richard's Complementary Rules of Ownership:
  1.  If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
  2.  If you throw it away, you will need it the next day.

First Law of Revision:
Information necessitating a change of design will be conveyed to
the designer after - and only after - the plans are complete.
                              (Often called the "Now They Tell Us!" Law.)

Law of Applied Confusion:
The one piece that the plant forgot to ship is the one that
supports 75% of the balance of the shipment:

Corollary to Law of Applied Confusion:
Not only did the plant forget to ship it,
50% of the time they haven't even made it.

Second Law of Applied Confusion:
Truck deliveries that normally take one day
will take five when you are waiting for the truck.

Bitton's Postulate on State-Of-The-Art Electronics:
If you understand it, it's obsolete.

Manubay's First Law for Programmers:
If a programmer's modification of an existing program works,
it's probably not what the users want.

Manubay's Second Law for Programmers:
Users don't know what they really want,
but they know for certain what they don't want.

Edwards' Time/Effort Law:
Effort x Time = Constant
  A.  Given a large initial time to do something, the initial
      effort will be small.
  B.  As time goes to zero, effort goes to infinity.

Corollary to Edwards' Time/Effort Law:
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

Jose's Axiom:
Nothing is as temporary as that which is called permanent.

Corollary to Jose's Axiom:
Nothing is as permanent as that which is called temporary.

Washlesky's Law:
Anything is easier to take apart than to put together.

Rudnicki's Rule:
That which cannot be taken apart will fall apart.

Rap's Law of Inanimate Reproduction:
If you take something apart and put it back together enough
times, eventually you will have two of them.

Freivald's Law:
Only a fool can reproduce another fool's work.

Reverend Chichester's Laws:
If the bulletin covers are in short supply,
church attendance will exceed all expectations.

Tenenbaum's Law of Replicability:
The most interesting results happen only once.

Souder's Law:
Repetition does not establish validity.

Tillis' Organization Principle:
If you file it, you'll know where it is but never need it.
If you don't file it, you'll need it but never know where it is.

Hanggi's Law:
The more trivial your research, the more people will read it and agree.

Corollary to Hanggi's Law:
The more vital your research, the less people will understand it.

Cerf's Comments on Modern Science:
  1.  If it's incomprehensible, it's mathematics.
  2.  If it doesn't make sense, it's either economics or psychology.

Young's Comment on Scientific Method:
You can't get here from there.

Macbeth's Comment on Evolution:
The best is not ipso facto a good theory.

The Sagan Fallacy:
To say a human being is nothing but molecules is like
saying a Shakespearean play is nothing but words.

Murphy's Uncertainty Principle:
You can know something has gone wrong only when
you make an odd number of mistakes.

The Banana Principle:
If you buy bananas or avocados before they are ripe, there won't be any left
by the time they are ripe. If you buy them ripe, they rot before they are eaten.

The Pineapple Principle:
The best parts of anything are always impossible
to remove from the worst parts.

Walker's Law of the Household:
There is always more dirty laundry than clean laundry.

Pope's Law:
Chipped dishes never break.

Woodside's Grocery Principle:
The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.

Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
   Chapman's Commentary on Paul's Law:
   It takes children three years to learn Paul's Law.

Snider's Law:
Nothing can be done in one trip.

Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

Boren's Law For Cats:
When in doubt, wash.

Gerard's Law:
When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks
to clear.  When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.

Law of Supermarkets:
The quality of the house brand varies inversely
with the size of the supermarket chain.

Pantuso's First Law:
The book you spent $10.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.

Goldenstern's Rules:
  1.  Always hire a rich attorney.
  2.  Never buy from a rich salesman.

Vile's Law of Value:
The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.

Fagin's Rule on Past Prediction:
Hindsight is an exact science.

Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

Hutchison's Law:
If a situation requires undivided attention, it will occur
simultaneously with a compelling distraction.

Feinberg's Second Principle:
Memory serves its own master.

Murray's Laws:
  1.  Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
  2.  Never ask a salesman if his is a good price.

Sigstad's Law:
When it gets to be your turn, they change the rules.

The Poker Principle:
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.

Murphy's Constant:
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

Stitzer's Vacation Principle:
When packing for a vacation, take half as much clothing and twice
as much money.

Eng's Principle:
The easier it is to do, the harder it is to change.

Stenderup's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.

Wagner's Law of Sports Coverage:
When the camera isolates on a male athlete, he will spit, pick or scratch.

Dorr's Law of Athletics:
In an otherwise empty locker room,
any two individuals will have adjoining lockers.

Law of Practice:
Plays that work in theory do not work in practice.
Plays that work in practice do not work during the game.

Phillip's Law:
Four-wheel-drive just means getting stuck in more inaccessible places.

Edds' Law of Radiology:
The colder the X-Ray table, the more of your body you are
required to place on it.

Crosby's Law:
You can tell how bad a musical is by how many times the chorus yells "hooray."

Fulton's Law of Gravity:
The effort to catch a falling, breakable object will produce more
destruction than if the object had been allowed to fall in the first place.

Rush's Rule of Gravity:
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall
nearby while all other coins will roll out of sight.

Vile's First Law of Linesmanship:
If you're running for a short line, it suddenly becomes a long line.

Vile's Second Law of Linesmanship:
When you're waiting in a long line, the people behind you are
shunted to a new, short line.

Vile's Third Law of Linesmanship:
If you step out of a short line for a second, it becomes a long line.

Vile's Fourth Law of Linesmanship:
If you're in a short line, the people in front let in their
friends and relatives and make it a long line.

Vile's Fifth Law of Linesmanship:
A short line outside a building becomes a long line inside.

Vile's Sixth Law of Linesmanship:
If you stand in one place long enough, you make a line.

McLaughlin's Law:
In a key position in every genealogy you will find a John Smith from London.

Howden's Law:
You remember to mail a letter only when you're nowhere near a mailbox.

First Law of Postal Delivery:
Love letters, business contracts and money you are due always
arrive three weeks late.

Second Law of Postal Delivery:
Junk mail arrives the day it was sent.

Maahs' Law:
Things go right so they can go wrong.

Young's Third Law:
It is when you trip over your own shoes that you start picking up shoes.

Hoffer's Law:
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Porkingham's Second Law of Sportfishing:
The least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.

Corollary to Porkingham's Second Law of Sportfishing:
The more elaborate and costly the equipment, the greater the
chance of having to stop at the fish market on the way home.

Porkingham's Third Law of Sportfishing:
The worse your line is tangled, the better is the fishing around you.

McClaughry's Law of Zoning:
Where zoning is not needed, it will work perfectly.
Where it is desperately needed, it always breaks down.

First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.

First Workshop Principle:
The one wrench or drill bit you need will be the one missing from
the tool chest.

Second Workshop Principle:
Most projects require three hands.

Third Workshop Principle:
Leftover nuts never match leftover bolts.

Fourth Workshop Principle:
The more carefully you plan a project, the more confusion there
is when something goes wrong.

Zappa's Law:
There are two things on earth that are universal:  Hydrogen and stupidity.

Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above-average drivers.

Munder's Theorem:
For every "10" there are 10 "1's."

Dykstra's Law:
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

Meyer's Law:
In a social situation, that which is most difficult to do is
usually the right thing to do.

Steve Young's Principle on Emergent Individuation:
Everybody wants to peel his own banana and have his $40 mil, too.

Cohen's Second Law:
People are divided into only two groups - the righteous and the
unrighteous - and the righteous do the dividing.

Rule of the Open Mind:
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.

"He goes through life, with his mouth open and his mind shut."

"In closing..." is always followed by the other half of the speech.

"Off the top of the head ideas" are often like dandruff - small and flaky.

"Push" is the force exerted on the door marked PULL.

"What hath God wrought!"
  - First telegraph message: sent from Washington to Baltimore by Samuel Morse

The trouble with being a breadwinner today is that the
government gets such a big slice.

10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.

Moral indignation permits envy or hate to be acted out as a virtue

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
                                        Sigmund Freud

Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be
 appointed to do the work.

  This guy was walking through the desert when he found a magic lamp.
He picked the lamp up and rubbed the side of it.  Sure enough, a
genie popped out.  The genie said, "Thank you for getting me out of
that lamp.  In return, I will grant you one wish."  So the guy thought
about it and said, "I want a foreign car dealership in a major
metropolitan city."  Pooof, he had a Chrysler dealership in Tokyo...

"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night."
    WILLIE SUTTON

"If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?"
    RICHARD NIXON

"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit
the target."
    ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."
    PAUL ERLICH

Sex is hereditary -- If your parents never had it, chances are you
won't either.

Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
    MARK TWAIN

"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'...  Their best approach, so far has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words 'user-friendly' on the cover."
    BILL GATES

Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.

"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real
money."
    EVERETT DIRKSEN

Programmers get overlaid!

Help stamp out, eliminate and abolish redundancy!

The cost of feathers has risen...  Now even DOWN is up!

Next time, give "The gift that keeps on giving" -- A female kitten.

On a clear disk, you can seek forever!

Happiness is a hard drive!

F U CN RD THS U CNT SPL WRTH A DM!

The probability of someone watching you is directly related to the
stupidity of your actions.

If Old MacDonald had a computer, would
it use Eee-aye-eee I/O?
    BOB DONALDSON

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!"
    DAVID FARRAGUT

"That packet of assorted miseries which we call a ship."
    RUDYARD KIPLING

"The golden rule is that there is no golden rule."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"Sir?  Am I to understand that you people sell dead, fried BIRDS here?"
    PENGUIN OPUS, at Kentucky Fried Chicken (Bloom County)

"The little I know, I owe to my ignorance."
    SACHA GUITRY

"By push of bayonets, no firing until you see the whites of their eyes."
    FREDERICK THE GREAT

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
    JEAN ROSSEAU

"A great devotee of the Gospel of Getting it On"
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"My duty is to obey orders."
    THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON

"A man is a old as he is feeling.
 A woman is as old as she looks."
    MORTIMER COLLINS

"Sentence first - verdict afterwards."
    LEWIS CARROLL

"Physics is experience, arranged in economical order."
    ERNST MACH

"You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren."
    WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON

"Doubt is brother-devil to Despair."
    JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY

"Why stop now, just when I'm hating it?"
    MARVIN THE PARANOID ANDROID (Douglas Adams)

"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you."
    ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

"Not bloody likely."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry."
    WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
    THOMAS ALVA EDISON

"What a woman wants is what you're out of.  She wants more of a thing when
it's scarce."
    WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER

"Science is a cemetary of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them."
    MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO

"Take it from me - he's got the goods."
    WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER

"We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse."
    RUDYARD KIPLING

"It was as beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are."
    WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER

"The only deadly sin I know is cynicism."
    HENRY LEWIS STIMSON

"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."
    NORMAN DOUGLAS

"Her beauty was sold for an old man's gold,
 She's a bird in a gilded cage."
    ARTHUR J. LAMB

"The law must be stable, but it must not stand still."
    ROSCOE POUND

"Most women are not so young as they are painted."
    SIR MAX BEERBOHM

"If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it."
    CALVIN COOLIDGE

"Does anyone REALLY read these stupid quotes?"
    The SysOp

"Say it with flowers."
    PATRICK F. O'KEEFE

"All truths begin as blasphemies."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
    SLEDGE HAMMER

"No opium-smoking in the elevators."
    WILSON MIZNER, sign in hotel he managed

"The worst cliques are those which consist of one man."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"It's a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat."
    WILSON MIZNER, comment about Hollywood

"I am a One Hundred Percent American;
 I am a superpatriot."
    WILLIAM W. WOOLLCOTT

"Men of the South!  It is better to die on your feet than to live on your
 knees."
    EMILIANO ZAPATA

"'Twixt the optimist and pessimist
 The difference is droll:
 The optimist sees the doughnut
 But the pessimist sees the hole."
    McLANDBURGH WILSON

"I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"There will be no beans in the Almost Perfect State."
    DONALD MARQUIS

"Can you imagine the silence if everyone said only what he knows?"
    KAREL CAPEK

"Art upsets, science reassures."
    GEORGES BRAQUE

"Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented."
    GEORGES BRAQUE

"There are truths which can kill a nation."
    JEAN GIRAUDOUX

"There are no secrets better kept than the secret everybody guesses."
    GEORGE B. SHAW

"Never give a sucker an even break."
    EDWARD F. ALBEE

"There's a sucker born every minute."
    PHINEAS T. BARNUM

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
    NATHAN HALE

"Think of your forefathers- Think of your posterity!"
    JOHN Q. ADAMS

"Anything awful makes me laugh.  I misbehaved once at a funeral."
    CHARLES LAMB

What's tennis without a racket?

Insanity is hereditary -- You get it from your children.

An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought.

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

A rolling stone gathers momentum.

Gravity doesn't exist: the earth sucks.

Q: What's the most popular form of birth control?
A: The headache.

Clean mind, clean body: take your pick.

Q: What's black and white and red all over?
A: An embarassed zebra.

Q: What's black and white and red all over?
A: Certainly not the Halifax newspapers.

Ancient Chinese Curse:
 May all your wishes be granted.

Ancient Chinese Curse:
 May you live in interesting times.

Organization is the enemy of improvisation.

Familiarity breeds.

A good memory does not equal pale ink.

He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Opening night: the night before the play is ready to open.

I did it!  I found the program's last bug!
  bug
    bug
      bug
        bug
          bug
            bug
               bug

On y soit, qui mal y pense.  (You are what you think.)

Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten.  (He who laughs last laughs best.)

He who laughs last probably doesn't understand the joke.

C'est la vie.

As a goatherd learns his trade by goat,
  so a writer learns his trade by wrote.

"The system is not quite as rickety as I have been telling you."
     RALPH GORIN

This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door.

!retupmoc siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

Let him who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox.

Crittendon's 14th application of Murphy's First Law:
  You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread
  to butter.

Ginsberg's Theorems:
  1) You can't win.
  2) You can't break even.
  3) You can't even quit the game.

Weiler's Law:
  Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 3:
  Procedures designed to implement the purpose
  won't quite work.

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Laws:
  Murphy was an optimist.

Sevareid's Law: The chief cause of problems is solutions.

If at first you don't succeed, try something else.

Kitman's Law:  Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel.

Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.

Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.

The Law of Selective Gravity (The Buttered Side Down Law):
  An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Interchangable devices won't.

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics:
  Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a
  larger can.

Anthony's Law of Force:
  Don't force it, get a larger hammer.

Any given program, once running, is obsolete.

If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get
him to float on his back you've got something.

If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless hound.

Westheimer's Time Estimation Rule:
  Estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2,
  and add 3, indpendent of the units of time.

A thing not worth doing isn't worth doing well.

Bye's First Law of Model Railroading:
  Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of
  faults encountered is proportional to the number of viewers.

Wolfgang's Third Law:  It can't work.

Don's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.

Si six scies scient six saucissions,
  six cent six scies scieront six cent six saucissions.
  (If 6 saws saw 6 sausages, 606 saws will saw 606 sausages.

Un chasseur sachant chasser chasse sans son chien.
  (A hunter who knows how to hunt hunts without his dog)

Ton the' t'a-t'il ote' ton toux?
  (Did the tea cure your cough?)

Dinon dina, dit on, du dos dodu d'un dodu dindon.
  (Dindon dined, said he, on the fat back of a fat turkey.)

Qui trop embrasse mal entreint. (Grab much, gain little.)

Un tien vaut miex que deux tu l'auras.
  (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.)

First Law of Advice: The correct advice is to give the advice that is desired.

Third Law of Advice:   Simple advice is the best advice.

"If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear
the sounds of a restaurant"
     SNOOPY

There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

"Alia jacta est." (The die is cast.)
    JULIUS CAESAR after crossing the Rubicon

"If little else, the brain is an educational toy."
    TOM ROBBINS

"When we first practice to deceive."
    SIR WALTER SCOTT

When in darkness or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

The Fourth Law of Computing: On a slow day, you can wait forever.

Sweer's Impossibility Theorem:
   Nothing can be both completely general
   and internally consistent at the same time.

Swap read error, you lose your core image.

Murphy's First Law:
   Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Murphy's Second Law:
   Everything takes longer than you think.

Murphy's Third Law:
   Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,
   and at the worst possible time.

Murphy's Fourth Law:
   If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
   the one that will cause the most damage will be the one
   to go wrong.

Murphy's Fifth Law:
   If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

Murphy's Seventh Law:
   Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Eighth Law:
   If everything seems to be going well,
   you have obviously overlooked something.

Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 1:
   If you explain so clearly that no one can misunderstand,
   somebody will.

Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 2:
   If you do something which you are sure will meet with
   everyone's approval, somebody won't like it.

Crane's Law:
   There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Law of Communications:
   The result of improved and enlarged communications
   is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.

Lord Falkland's Rule:
   When it is not necessary to make a decision,
   it is necessary not to make a decision.

Jones' Motto:
   Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Gumperson's Law:
   The probability of anything happening is inversely
   proportional to its desirability.

Cole's Law:
  Thinly sliced cabbage.

The usefulness of a meeting is inversely proportional
   to its attendance.

The Peter Principle:
   In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his level
   of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an
   employee incompetent to execute its duties.

Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place.

Parkinson's First Law:
   Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson's Second Law:
   Expenditures rise to meet income.

Shanahan's Law:
   The length of a meeting rises with the square
   of the number of people present.

Zymurgy's Seventh Exception to Murphy's Laws:
   When it rains it pours.

Internal consistency is more highly valued than efficiency.

Jenkinson's Law:
  It won't work.

The DREA Law:
   Under the most rigorously controlled conditions,
   the experimental apparatus will do exactly as it pleases.

Skip's Lament:
   Given any problem containing N equations,
   There will be n+1 unknowns.

Finagle's First Law:
   If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Fourth Law:
   Once a job is messed up,
   anything done to improve it makes it worse.

Always draw your curves then plot the readings.

Experiments should be reproducable,
  - they should all fail in the same way.

Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.

When working toward the solution of a problem, it always
helps if you know the answer.

Any given program, once running, is obsolete.

Any given program will expand to fill all available resources.

The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.

Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

Cheops' Law:
  Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Helplessly planned projects take three times longer to complete
than expected; carefully planned projects only twice as long.

Wynne's Law:
  Negative slack tends to increase.

Boren's Law:
  When in doubt, mumble.

Q's Law:
  No matter what stage of completion one reaches in a project,
  the cost of the remainder of the project remains constant.

Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the soul of genius.

Standing on head makes smile of frown,
but rest of face also upside down.

You can't plant me in your penthouse,
  I'm going back to my plow.

I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.

Jargon is used as a means of succeeding by not simplifying.

If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency),
it will serve us right.
    ALISTAIR COOKE

The six steps in a project:
  1) Unbounded enthusiasm
  2) Total disillusionment
  3) PANIC!!
  4) Frantic search for the guilty
  5) Punishment of the innocent
  6) Promotion of the uninvolved.

Lost interest?  It's so bad I've lost apathy.

. The greatest programming project of all took six days;
. on the seventh day the programmer rested.
. We've been trying to debug the blinking thing ever since.
.
. Moral: design before you implement.

Two wrongs do not make a right:
It usually takes three or more.

A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl
doesn't lose her confidence.

A lie in time saves nine.

A lost ounce of gold may be found, a lost moment of time never.

A man who turns green has eschewed protein.

A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.

A stitch in time saves nine.

A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.

A wise man can see more from a the bottom of a well than a
fool can from a mountain top.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.

Bedfellows make strange politicians.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
    MAE WEST

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
    THOREAU

Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap.

Creditors have much better memories than debtors.

Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac,
you can always take something for it.

Draw your salary before spending it.

God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends.

He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with two eyes.

He who laughs last probably doesn't understand the joke.

Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.

History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.

How many "coming men" has one known!  Where on earth do they all go to?

How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless serpent.

How you look depends on where you go.

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise.

I don't remember ever having had the itch, and yet scratching
is one of nature's sweet pleasures, and so handy.

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.

I must have slipped a disk - my pack hurts.

I never fail to convice an audience that the best thing
they could do was to go away.

I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.

Idleness is the holiday of fools.

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.

If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.

If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been away on
vacation.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

It is better to wear out than to rust out.

It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be forgotten.

Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

Let's just be friends and make no special effort to ever
see each other again.

Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer,
then you find there is nothing in it.

Many a family tree needs trimming.

Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.

Money may buy friendship but money cannot buy love.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend
the rest of my life there.

Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.

Never drink from your fingerbowl - it contains only water.

Never say you know a man until you have divided an
inheritance with him.

Nice guys get sick.

No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds
that it was human nature.

No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts
for support rather than illumination.

Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves
for their inability to give bad examples.

One family builds a wall, two families enjoy it.

One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.

Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back
at the rear of an elephant.

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and
are willing to go through hell to get it.

People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way
of taking advantage of them.

People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.

Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock
instead of the sword.

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal
down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Put your brain in gear before starting your mouth.

Raising pet electric eels is gaining a lot of current popularity.

Reputation: What others are not thinking about you.

Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.

Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face
also upside down.

Swap read error.  You lose your mind.

The Programmers' Cheer:
 Shift to the left; Shift to the right!
 Pop up, push down, Byte, Byte, Byte!

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will
take care of themselves.

That must be wonderful!  I dont understand it at all.

The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains
because the average man can see better than he can think.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.

The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction
to a tedious book.

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and
sharpen my tongue.

The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep.

The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put
a lot of relatives on the train for home.

The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.

The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.

The minute a man is convinced that he is interesting, he isn't.

The only rose without thorns is friendship.

The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if you say yes.

The plural of spouse is spice.

The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.  The haves get more,
the have-nots die.

The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.

There are few people more often in the wrong than those who
cannot endure to be thought so.

There are three things I have always loved and never understood:
Art, music, and women.

There's at least one fool in every married couple.

There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.

Think twice before speaking. But don't say "think think click click".

This BBS will self-destruct in five minutes.

Those of you who think you know everything are annoying
to those of us who do.

To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult to
criticize the competent.

To be or not to be - Shakespeare
To do is to be.    - Kant
To be is to do.    - Sartre
Do be do be do.    - Sinatra
Yabba dabba do!    - Flintstone

Nietzsche is pietzsche

To keep your friends treat them kindly; to kill them, treat them often.

To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.

To save a single life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.

We prefer to speak evil of ourselves than not speak of
ourselves at all.

We read to say that we have read.

What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that
they think themselves cleverer than we are.

What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that
a writer is working when he's staring out the window.

What orators lack in depth they make up in length.

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more
than man's transparency.

What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.

When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.

When the wind is great, bow before it; when the wind is heavy,
yield to it.

When you become used to never being alone, you may consider
yourself Americanized.

Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.

Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement
unless it was to avoid responsibility?

With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.

Without fools there would be no wisdom.

You can do very well in speculation where land or anything
to do with earth is concerned.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

You cannot propel youself forward by patting yourself on the back.

Your depth of comprehension may tend to make you lax in worldly ways.

Youth had been a habit of hers so long that she could not part with it.

eHpl ! Imat arppdei sndi eht eED-C20

As expected, the victorious candidate in a particularly
dirty recent political campaign, won by a mudslide.

. Corollary:
. There is an infinite number of describable functions, which are
. not effectively computable.
.       N. JONES - "Computability Theory"
.
. Note: This contradicts the oft stated maxim "If a function can be
.      defined, it can be programmed".

Basic research is what I am doing when --- I don't know what I am doing.

Success isn't how far you got,
but the distance you travelled from where you started.

The biggest mistake that you can make
is to believe that you are working for somebody else.

Monday is a hard way to spend one-seventh of your life

Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel like it

Next to surviving an earthquake,
nothing is quite so satisfying as
as receiving a income tax refund

An authority is somebody who can tell you
more about something than you really care to know.

Running a business is about 95% people and 5% economics.

Patience is something that you admire greatly in the driver behind you
but not in the one ahead of you.

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

It's always easy to see both sides of an issue
we are not particularly concerned about.

Why can't life's big problems come when we are twenty and know everything?

When you try to make an impression, the chances are that
that is the impression you will make.

When you save for a long time to buy something, then
you find that you can't afford it  ---  that's inflation.

Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot!

If you are what you eat, does that mean the Euelle Gibbons really was a nut?

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Old bakers never die, they just quit making dough!

Chemists have solutions!

Old bakers never die, you just can't get a rise out of them!

Life is complex;  It consists of real and imaginary parts!

Some come to the fountain of knowledge to drink... I prefer just to gargle.

"The true test of intelligence is not how much we not, but rather how
we behave when we don't know what to do."
    JOHN HOLT

"Roads?  Where we're going we don't need roads!"
    Doc, from "Back to the Future"

Law of Computer programming:
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.


You can't win. You can't break even. You can't even quit the game.

Alan's Law of Success:
If at first you succeed, you have no idea what you're doing.

Matilda's Sub-Committee Law:
If you leave the room, you're elected.

The slowest checker is always at the quick check-out lane.

Merkin's Maxim:
When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.

Muir's Law:
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to the universe.

Porkingham's Fishing Philosophy:
The worse your line is tangled, the better is the fishing around you.

Wiler's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.

Alan's Corollary on Time:
Time sucks!

The Watergate Principle:
Government corruption will always be reported in the past tense.

The telephone will ring when you are outside
the door fumbling for your keys.

The Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

Law of Computer programming:
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

Alan's Motto:
It's easier to make true enemies than true friends.

Goebel's Law of Rush Hour Traffic:
What speeds up, must slow down.  But who says it's ever gonna speed up?

If it looks easy, it's tough...
If it looks tough, it's impossible.

Steele's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something... I believe I'll have another drink.

Murray's Hockey Rule:
Hockey is a game played by six good players and the home team.

Ferguson's Law:
A crisis is when you can't say "Let's forget the whole thing."

Atwood's Fourteenth Corollary:
No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.

Murphy's Seventh Corollary:
Every solution breeds new problems.

Peer's Law:
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.


Law of Gifts:
You get the most of what you need the least.

Gold's Law:
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Gillenson's Law of Expectation:
Never get excited over how people look from behind.

Alan's Second Law:
Never eat anything bigger than your head.

Hoare's Law:
Inside every large problem is a small problem trying to get out.

Newton's Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

An unbreakable toy can be used to break other toys.

5th Law of the Office:
Vital papers will move from where you left them to where you can't find them.

Vail's Axiom:
In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchial level.

Only adults have difficulty with child-proof bottles.

Parkinson's Second Law:
Expenditures rise to meet income.

Steinbach's Guidline:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

Worker's Law:
No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.

Cooper's Metalaw:
A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.

Davis' Answer to Roger's Law:
Serving coffee on an aircraft causes turbulence.

Weber's Definition: An expert is one who knows more and more
about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.

Stenderup's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.

Whistler's Law:
You never know who's right, but you always know who's in charge.

Murphy's Flu Philosophy:
Even water tastes bad when taken on doctor's orders.

Murphy's Philosophy:
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

Law of the Office:
Important letters which contain no errors will develope errors in the mail.

Murray's Rule of Football:
Nothing is ever so bad it can't be made worse by firing the coach.

Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

McGowan's Axiom:
If a Christmas gift is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.

Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the
track.

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion
with confidence.

Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the sytem or
expands it beyond recognition.

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not
understand.

The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with
the fundamental solvency of the firm.

The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less
until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and
he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and
he'll have to touch to be sure.

All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.

All's well that ends.

A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the
hours are lost.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final
inspection.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a
computer.

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men
working 20 years make.

Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in
an honest day's work.

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know
who wrote the book or even what book.

The primary function of the design engineer is to make things
difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the
serviceman.

To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will
take the longest and cost the most.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than
done.

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is
obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts
which are still under development.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system that works.

If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try
multiplying by the page number.

Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
Any system which depends on human reliablity is unreliable.

Give all orders verbally.  Never write anything down that might
go into a "Pearl Harbor File".

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the
organism will do as it damn well pleases.

If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds
that the competition already has the order.

In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension
can be totalled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday.
The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on
Monday.

Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it
itches.

All things are possible except skiing through a revolving
door.

The only perfect science is hind-sight.

Work smarder and not harder and be careful of yor speling.

If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least
accessible corner.

Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.

Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will
want to use it.

The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional
to the level of management.

Nature sides with the hidden flaw.

Ralph's Observation:
  It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object
  to realize that you are in a hurry.

Cole's Law:
  Thinly sliced cabbage

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

Firestone's Law of Forcasting:
  Chicken Little only has to be right once.

Manly's Maxim:
  Logic is a systematic method of coming to
  the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Moer's truism:
  The trouble with most jobs is the job holder's
  resemblence to being one of a sled dog team. No one
  gets a change of scenery except the lead dog.

Cannon's Comment:
  If you tell the boss you were late for work because you
  had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

MURPHY'S LAW:
  If anything can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's Corollary:
  Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Corollary:
  It is impossible to make anything foolproof
  because fools are so ingenious

Murphy's Constant:
  Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law:
  Everything goes wrong all at once.

O'Toole's Commentary:
  Murphy was an optimist.

Scott's Second Law:
  When an error has been detected and corrected,
  it will be found to have been correct in the first place.

Finagle's First Law:
  If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Second Law:
  No matter what the experiment's result, there
  will always be someone eager to:
  (a) misinterpret it,
  (b) fake it, or
  (c) believe it supports his own pet theory.

Finagle's Third Law:
  In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
  correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.

Finagle's Fourth Law:
  Once a job is fouled up, anything done to
  improve it only makes it worse.

Gumperson's Law:
  The probability of anything happening is in
  inverse ratio to its desirability.

Rudin's Law:
  In crises that force people to choose among
  alternative courses of action, most people will
  choose the worst one possible.

Ehrman's Commentary
  Things will get worse before they will get better.
  Who said things would get better?

Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
  Nothing ever goes away.

Howe's Law:
  Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
  Once you open a can of worms, the only way to
  recan them is to use a bigger can.

Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
  Negative expectations yield negative results.
  Positive expectations yield negative results.

Klipstein's Law:
  Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward
  maximum difficulty of assembly.

You never find a lost article until you replace it.

Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
  The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional
  to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

Lewis' Law:
  No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've
  bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

If nobody uses it, there's a reason.

You get the most of what you need the least.

The Airplane Law:
  When the plane you are on is late, the plane you
  want to transfer to is on time.

Etorre's Observation:
  The other line moves faster.

First Law of Revision:
  Information necessitiating a change of design will be
  conveyed to the designer after - and only after - the
  plans are complete.
  (Often called the 'Now They Tell Us' Law)

Second Law of Revision:
  The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the
  further its influence will extend and the more plans
  will have to be redrawn.

Corollary to the First Law of Revision:
  In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus
  one obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong
  way, so as to expedite subsequent revision.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
I.  Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
II. Any given program costs more and takes longer.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
III. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
IV. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
V. Any program will expand to fill available memory.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VI. The value of a program is proportional to the weight
    of its output.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VII. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities
     of the programmer who must maintain it.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
VIII. Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
IX. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to
    detectable errors, which by definition are limited.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
X. Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
  There's always one more bug.

Shaw's Principle:
  Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool
  will want to use it.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
  You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of
  the bread to butter.

Law of Selective Gravity:
  An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jennings Corollary to the Law of Selective Gravity:
  The chance of the bread falling with the butter side down
  is directly proportional to the value of the carpet.

Wyszkowski's Second Law:
  Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.

Sattinger's Law
  It works better if you plug it in.

Lowery's Law:
  If it jams - force it.
  If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Schmidt's Law:
  If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.

Cahn's Axiom:
  When all else fails, read the instructions.

Gordon's First Law:
  If a project is not worth doing at all,
  it's not worth doing well.

Law of Research:
  Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Maier's Law:
  If the facts do not conform to the theory,
  they must be disposed of.

Peer's Law:
  The solution to the problem changes the problem.

. Beware of the man who works hard to learn something,
. learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
.
. He is full of murderous resentment of people who
. are ignorant without having come by their ignorance
. the hard way.

Help a man when he is in trouble and he will
  remember you when he is in trouble again.

You can lead a man to slaughter,
but you can't make him think.

Don't get mad, get even.

Carson's Law:
  It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.

The Golden Rule:
  He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Mark's mark:
  Love is a matter of chemistry;
  sex is a matter of physics.

Korman's conclusion:
  The trouble with resisting temptation is it may
  never come your way again.

Knight's Law:
  Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

Maugham's Thought:
  Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Krueger's Observation:
  A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil
  service exam in order to work for the government.

Benchley's Law of Distinction:
  There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe
  there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

Harver's Law:
  A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Schmidt's Observation:
  All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.

Gibb's Law:
  Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Rule of Accuracy:
  When working towards the solution of a problem, it always
  helps if you know the answer.

Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.

Wyszowski's Second Law:
  No experiment is reproducible.

Fett's Law:
  Never replicate a successful experiment.

The first Myth of Management:
  It exists.

Spend sufficient time confirming the need and the need will disappear.

Peter's Placebo:
  An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labour:
  People are always available for work in the past tense.

Wiker's Law:
  Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Clarke's First Law:
  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that
  something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he
  states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's Third Law:
  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Segal's Law:
  A man with a watch knows what time it is.
  A man with two watches is never sure.

Weiler's Law:
 Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

Weinberg's Second Law:
  If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
  the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Hartley's Second Law:
  Never go to bed with anybody crazier than you are.

Beckhap's Law:
  Beauty times brains equals a constant.

Katz's Law:
  Men and women will act rationally when all other
  possibilities have been exhausted.

Cole's Axiom:
  The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
  the population is growing.

Vique's Law:
  A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

Jone's Motto:
  Friends come and go but enemies accumulate.

Churchill's commentary on man:
  Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
  time he will pick himself up and continue on.

The ultimate Law:
  All general statements are false.

The Unspeakable Law:
  As soon as you mention something;
  if it is good, it goes away.
  if it is bad, it happens.

The Whispered Rule:
  People will believe anything if you whisper it.

The First Law of Wing Walking:
  Never let hold of what you've got until
  you've got hold of something else.

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will
happen to you the rest of the day.

Farnsdick's corollary:
  After things have gone from bad to worse,
  the cycle will repeat itself.

Lynch's Law:
  When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Law of Revelation:
 The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Langsam's Law:
  Everything depends.

. Hellrung's Law:
.   If you wait, it will go away.
.
. Shevelson's Extension:
.  ... having done its damage.
.
. Grelb's Addition:
.  ... if it was bad, it will be back.

Grossman's Misquote:
  Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

Ducharme's Precept:
  Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

First Postulate of Isomurphism:
  Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

The Unapplicable Law:
  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.

Witten's Law:
  Whenever you cut your fingernails, you will find a
  need for them an hour later.

Perkin's postulate:
  The bigger they are, the harder they hit.

Harrison's Postulate:
  For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

.Conway's Law:
. In every organization there will always be one person
. who knows what is going on.
.
. This person must be fired.

Stewart's Law of Retroaction:
  It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

MacDonald's Second Law:
  Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for
  a number and give it back to them.

First Law of Laboratory Work:
  Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1.  If it's green or it wiggles, it's biology.
2.  If it stinks, it's chemistry.
3.  If it doesn't work, it's physics.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The Sausage Principle:
  People who love sausage and respect the law
  should never watch either one being made.

Horngren's Observation: (generalized)
  The real world is a special case.

Merkin's Maxim:
  When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.

Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
  Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong
  with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is
  wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.

Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity.

Matz's warning:
  Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

Gold's Law:
  If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Lewis' Law:
  People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

Law of Reruns:
  If you have watched a TV series only once, and you watch
  it again, it will be a rerun of the same episode.

Shirley's Law:
  Most people deserve each other.

Forgive and remember.

Woltman's Law:
  Never program and drink beer at the same time.

Gallois' Revelation:
  If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out
  but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a
  very expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and no one dares
  to criticize it.

Galbraith's Law of Political Wisdom:
  Anyone who says he is not going to resign, four times, definitely will.

Allen's Law:
  Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Allen's Axiom:
  When all else fails, follow instructions.

Allen's Distinction:
  The lion and the calf shall lie down together,
  but the calf won't get much sleep.
  You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Avery's Observation:
  It does not matter if you fall down as long as you
  pick up something from the floor while you get up.

Berra's Law:
  You can observe a lot just by watching.

Bicycle Law:
  All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
  A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock.
  A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock.
  A 50 pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.

Cohen's Law:
  What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on
  the facts, not the facts themselves.

Colson's Law:
  When you've got them by the balls, their hearts
  and minds will follow.

Comin's Law:
  People will accept your idea much more readily if you
  tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
If the probability of success is not almost one,
then it is damned near zero.

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.

Goldwyn's Law of Contracts.
  A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
  No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while
  the legislature is in session.

Jone's Principle:
  Needs are a function of what other people have.

Langin's Law:
  If things were left to chance,
  they'd be better.

In America, it's not how much an item costs that matters,
it's how much you save.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
maybe you just don't understand the situation.

Mencken's Metalaw:
  For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution;
  and it is always wrong.

Sevareid's Law:
  The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Thoreau's Law:
  If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention
  of doing you good, you should run for your life.

Peer's Law:
  The solution to the problem changes the problem.

Lyall's Conjecture:
  If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.

Lyall's Fundamental Observation:
  The most important leg of a three legged stool
  is the one that's missing.

Pournelle's Law of Costs and Schedules:
  Everything costs more and takes longer.

Klipstein's Lament:
  All warranty and guarantee clauses are voided
  by payment of the invoice.

Klipstein's Observation:
  Any product cut to length will be too short.

Sueker's Note:
  If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.

Rosenfield's Regret:
  The most delicate component will be dropped.

.de la Lastra's Law:
.  After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed
.  from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong
.  access cover has been removed.
.
.de la Lastra's Corollary:
.  After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws,
.  it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.

Design flaws travel in groups.

You can't fight the law of conservation of energy
but you sure can bargain with it.

Gerrold's Fundamental Truth:
  It's a good thing money can't buy happiness.

. Gerrold's Law:
.   A little ignorance can go a long way.
.
. Lyall's Addendum:
.   ... in the direction of maximum harm.

Gerrold's Pronouncement:
  The difference between a politician and a snail is
  that a snail leaves its slime behind.

When a man laughs at his misfortunes, he loses a great
many friends. They never forgive the loss of their perogative.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better
than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country,
it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what
they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

Arcana Coelestica:
  Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to
  that obtained by Christ.
  Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
  may be happy.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

The Arithmetic of Cooperation:
  When you're adding up committees
    there's a useful rule of thumb:
  that talents make a difference,
    and follies make a sum.

The Ultimate Wisdom
  Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection
in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection.

Murphy's Military Laws:
1. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.

Murphy's Military Laws:
2. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

Murphy's Military Laws:
3. Friendly fire ain't.

Murphy's Military Laws:
4. The most dangerous thing in the combat zone
   is an officer with a map.

Murphy's Military Laws:
5. The problem with taking the easy way out is
   that the enemy has already mined it.

Murphy's Military Laws:
6. The buddy system is essential to your survival;
   it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.

Murphy's Military Laws:
7. The further you are in advance of your own positions,
   the more likely your artillery will shoot short.

Murphy's Military Laws:
8. Incoming fire has the right of way.

Murphy's Military Laws:
9. If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush.

Murphy's Military Laws:
10. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.

Murphy's Military Laws:
11. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.

Murphy's Miltary Laws:
12. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used
    on abandoned positions.

Murphy's Military Laws:
13. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire
    is incoming friendly fire.

Murphy's Military Laws:
14. There is nothing more satisfying that having someone take
    a shot at you, and miss.

Murphy's Military Laws:
15. Don't be conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire.
    Out of the combat zone, it draws sergeants.

Murphy's Military Laws:
16. If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.

Conrad's Conundrum:
  Technologies don't transfer.

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit
the national debt.

. The Three Ages of a Computer Product:
.
. Alpha test is when you wouldn't even show it to your mother.
. Beta test is when you strap your mom down and say, "Here, Mom."
. Gamma test is the rest of the life of the product.

Langlin's Law:
  If things were left to chance...
    They'd be better!

A stitch in time would have confused Einstein.
  - Anon.

He who hesitates is last.

An engineer is someone who does list processing in Fortran.

GIVE: Support the helpless victims of computer error.

Breeding rabbits is a hare raising experience.

People with narrow minds usually have broad tongues

Your program is sick!  Shoot it and put it out of its memory.

A mouse is an elephant built by the Japanese.

A penny saved is ridiculous

That does not compute.

Chemistry professors never die, they just smell that way!

To err is human, to forgive is against company policy.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Old musicians never die, they just de-compose.

Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.

If it works, Don't fix it.

Insomnia isn't anything to lose sleep over.

Everyone is entitled to my opinion.

The cost of feathers has risen...  Now even down is up!

Morfy's law - Enythink thit ken go rong willl.

He who laughs last is probably your boss.

Basic is a high level languish.

Drilling for oil is boring.

Teachers have class.

Chemistry professors never die, they just fail to react.

Where there's a will, there's an inheritance tax.

Celibacy is NOT hereditary.

Programming Department: Mistakes made while you wait.

Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.

Individualists unite!

Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.

If you eat yogurt, you'll have lots of culture.

Recursive, adj.; see Recursive

Rubber bands have snappy endings!

COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.

Any wire cut to specified length will be too short.

The motor will rotate in the wrong direction.

Always remove the last screw first.

Interchangeable parts won't.

It works better if you plug it in.

Experience varies directly with the amount of equipment ruined.

Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

A hangover is the wrath of gapes.

Clones are people two.

Going the speed of light is bad for your age.

There's no future in time travel.

Jealousy is all the fun you think they have.

If your feet smell and your nose runs -- you're built upside down.

Confession is good for the soul, but bad for your career.

If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.

He who puts his nose to the grindstone is a bloody fool.

The devil finds work for idle glands.

Genius is ten percent inspiration and fifty percent capital gains.

Let us remember that ours is a nation of lawyers and order.

Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot.

There is no such thing as a "Fail Safe" design.

Don't ask me; I was hired for my looks.

If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary form.

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Smile! Things can only get worse.

All requests for sick leave must be approved two weeks in advance.

After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

I'm in a phone booth at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk.

Cogito ergo spud. I think, therefore I yam.

I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.

EGGORY (eg' er ee) n. The part of the fridge that holds the eggs.

MINUTATER (min' u tay tur) The smallest french fry in the bag.

Old programmers don't die, they just lose their memory.

ASTROLOGY LAW: It's always the wrong time of the month.

Misery no longer loves company.  Nowadays it insists on it.

What's worth doing is worth doing for money.

Is a computer language with GOTO's totally Wirth-less?

A man's house is his hassle.

A chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs.

Reality is for people who can't face science fiction.

Friction is a drag.

Biology grows on you.

A man's best friend is his dogma.

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.

Schizophrenia beats being alone.

If you have nothing to do, don't do it here.

He who laughs last didn't get the joke.

We have an equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.

He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut.

Gravity brings me down.

Help stamp out and abolish redundancy!

Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.

Mount St. Helens should have used earth control.

It is hard to fly with the eagle when you work with the turkeys.

Prunes give you a run for your money.

Eat prune yogurt for that "get up and go" feeling.

Bureaucrats cut red tape... lengthwise!

If I'm right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?

2 + 2 = 5 ; with suitably large values of 2.

"WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE THERE IS LIBERTY;
WHEN THE PEOPLE FEAR THE GOVERNMENT THERE IS TYRANNY"
(There is no Question at this time in our history
   that Americans fear their Government)

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms.  The
strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep
and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves
against tyranny in government."
                                 -Thomas Jefferson

"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize
congress to prevent the people of the United States who are
peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
                                   - Sam Adams

"The great object is that every man be armed.  Everyone who
is able may have a gun."
                            -Patrick Henry

"Americans need never fear their government because on the
advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over
the people of almost every other nation."
                                    -James Madison

"..one of the basic conditions of the victory is socialism is
the arming of the workers (communist) and the disarming of the
bourgeoisie (the middle class)."
                                    -Bladimir I. Lenin

"Popular revolt against a ruthless, experienced modern dictatorship
which enjoys a Monopoly over weapons, and communications,...
is simply not a possibility in the modern age."
                               -George Keenan (1964)

"Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved
and opposed subjects."
                               -Leo Tolstoy (1893)

 "I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should
 move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other
 than the police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols
 and revolvers...no one should have a  right to anonymous
 ownership or use of a gun."
                             -Professor Dean Morris
                            (director, LEAA)

"If the opposition (citizen) disarms, well and good.  If it
refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
   (Those who answered, "Pete Wilson", "George Bush", "Willie
Clinton", or "Ross Perot", you are wrong.  It was actually
JOSEF STALIN, (a simple mistake).

"Tell the American people never to lose their guns. As
long as they keep their guns in their hands, what happened
here will never happen there."
                         -A dying China Citizen shot at
                          Beijing, Red China

George Bush, New York 1991: "My vision of a NEW WORLD ORDER
foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping
function."
                              -George Bush
                               New York, 1991

"It is the SACRED principles enshrined in the U.N. charter to
which we will henceforth pledge our allegiance."
                               -UN building, Feb 1, 1992.
                                spoken by George Bush

John E. Rankin, U.S. Congressman: "The United Nations is the
greatest fraud in all History.  It's purpose is to distroy
the United States."
                                - John E. Rankin
                                  U.S. Congressman

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more
controlled society.  Such a society would be dominated by an elite,
unrestrained by traditional values."
                           -Zbigniew Brezinsky
                            National advisor to Jimmy Carter

"Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance
 over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing
 even the most personal information about the citizen.  These files
 will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities"
                            -Zbigniew Brezinsky
                             National Advisor to Jimmy Carter

Hiding behind a mask of official righteousness, this
secret combination seeks to impose it's own concept of
geopolitical navigation, nullifying liberty as the hard-won
birthright of all Americans."
                           -Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz (ret)
                           U.S. Presidential Candidate, 1992

Baden Baden, Germany, 1991, Said: "We are grateful to the
Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other
great publications whose directors have attended our meetings
and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty
years."
                            -David Rockefeller
                             World Order Godfather

Rowan Gaither stated to Congressional Reese Commission
investigator Norman Dodd:  "We operate here under directives
which emulate from the White House... The substance of the
directives under which we operate is that we shall use our
grant making power to alter life in the United States so that
we can comfortably be merged with the Soviet Union."(Ike was
president at the time.)
                            -Rowan Gaither
                             President, Ford Foundation,1954

Peter Hoagland, Nebraska State Senator and Humanist said in
1983: "Fundamental, Bible believing people do not have the
right to indoctrinate their children in their religious
beliefs, because we, the state, are preparing them for the
year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global
society and their children will not fit in."
                        -Peter Hoagland
                         Nebraska State Senator

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise
power from behind the scenes."
                      -Justce Felix Frankfurter
                       U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. President, in a letter written
Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House, Roosevelt states:
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a
financial element in the large centers has owned the
government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."
                        -Franklin D. Roosevelt
                         U.S. President

  "I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood
what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would
move on Washington; they would not wait for an election...
It adds up to a preconseived plan to distroy the economic and
social independence of the United States!"
                          -George W. Malone
                           U.S. Senator(Nevada) 1957

Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company, commented on the
privately owned "Federal" Reserve System scam: "It is well
enough that people of the nation do not understand our
banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there
would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
                                          -Henry Ford
                                           Founder, Ford Motor Co.

"I consider it my duty to tell you of the extremely dangerous
threats that lie ahead. I KNOW FOR CERTAIN that we are now in a
period of the greatest strategic deception, perhaps in all history...
The Cold War is  NOT over, only in the state of remission...
The Soviet Union  is not truly 'on the verge of collapse'.
Western Defense, on the other hand, is."
                        -General Sir Walter Walker
                         Former NATO Commander-in-Chief

 "Gentlemen, Comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear
about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years.
These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no
significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for
cosmetic purposes.  Our purpose is to disarm the Americans, and
let them fall asleep.
                             -Mikhail Gorbachev (1987)

"..then, there will come a peace across the earth."
                                 -Joseph Stalin
                                 (after Global Communism)

 "..the meaning of peace is the absence of
the opposition to Socialism."
                                 -Karl Marx

".. they have seduced my people, saying PEACE,
and there was no peace."
                              -GOD
                               (Ezekiel 13:10)

".. For when they shall say "peace and safety" then the sudden
destruction comes upon them, as a travail upon a woman with child,
and they shall not escape."
                               -St. Paul

 "No one will enter the New World Order, unless he or she will
make a pledge to worship Lucifer.  No one will enter the New Age
unless he will take a Luciferian Initation."
                           -David Spangler
                            Director, Planetary Initiative
                            (a U.N. Group)

  "O Telenet, O Telenet, how num'rous are your indials...
  "O Telenet, O Telenet, we must be gooo-ing senile..
  (then the chorus, in Racal-Vadic speak)
 "Hello, Hello, INVALID CODE, ATZ OK MANUAL ANSWER MODE
  (finally, the invokation)
 "O Telenet, O Telenet, **** POSSIBLE DATA LOSS **** NO CARRIER"

I/O! I/O! It's off to work we go -  I/O!

"Look, Tonto, Indians! We might be in for trouble."
"What you mean, "we", white man?"

A politician is someone who would do anything for "the common man" except
become one.

"Look, here comes the U-boat commander!"
                                - Risky Business

Byte my disk!

 Trust me, I know what I'm doing..........

Biology grows on you.

Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.

 A sysop is a moron, a useless kinda clod,
 He spends his days composing text, and thinks himself a god.
 He cannot hold his liquor, his bladder's like a sieve.
 This introverted sorry swine, has no real right to live.
      Chorus: Oh sysop sysop go away and leave our BB be,
      We do not want to see your face on DECWAR or CB.
 A sysop is a nerdnose, a chowder-headed punk,
 I wonder, Sysop in the sky, Why do you spawn this breed?
 Of egotistic impotents who haven't learned to read.
      Chorus: Oh sysop sysop go away and leave our BB be,
      We do not want to see your face on DECWAR or CB.
 A sysop is contented;
 His blighted worldview sings a song of disco melody.
 A sysop is a greedy fool, an impish sort of snot,
 A sysop is the kind of man Will Rogers would have shot.
      Chorus: Oh sysop sysop go away and leave our BB be,
      We do not want to see your face on DECWAR or CB.

"We all live in a yellow subroutine, a yellow subroutine, a yellow subroutine.
We all live in a yellow subroutine..."
                                with no apologies whatsoever to John Lennon

 "If you give this man a byte, sweet carrier will die."
                                with no apologies whatsoever to Jim Morrison

                  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
                  █ ┌───────────────────┐ █
                  █ │C>                 │ █
                  █ │                   │ █
                  █ │                   │ █
                  █ │                   │ █
                  █ │                   │ █
                  █ │                   │ █
                  █ └───────────────────┘ █  ╓──────────╖
                  ▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀█▀▀▀▀  ╙──────────╜
        ██████████████████████████████████▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀██
        ████ AT ██ ∙∙∙∙∙ █████████████████ ════════════ ██
        ██████████████████████████████████──────────────██
        ███▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐██ ════════════ ██
        ███▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐▐██▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄██
        ██████████████████████████████████████████████████


                       ┌────────────────┐
                       │ ┌────────────┐ │
                       │ │C>          │ │
                       │ │            │ │
                       │ │            │ │
                       │ │            │ │
                       │ └────────────┘ │
                       └─┬────────────┬─┘
┌──────────────┐    ┌────┴────────────┴────┐
│       ┌─────┐│    │       ┌─────┐┌─────┐ │
│       │     ││    │ AT    │═╪═╪═││═╪═╪═│ │
│       └─────┘╞════╡║║║║║  └─────┘└─────┘ │ ┌───────┐
└╥╥──────────╥╥┘    └╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥╥┘ └╥─────╥┘
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░


             /\
        /\ _/
       / /  \
        / oo \
       (_\  |_)
        / \@___
   //  / |     |
  ((  /  | (*) |
   \\/ \ |__U__|     _____
    \  /__||\\_     / FIDO \
     \_)  |_)\_)   (________)


'tis an ill wind that blows no minds.

Programmers to it with jumps and loops.

C:DOS
C:DOS RUN
RUN DOS RUN
RUN RUN RUN

Oooh, Junior Barnes.... Juunior Ba-arnes .... YOU GUNKIE!
                                - Bill Cosby

Class... cla-ass ....CLASS.... SHUT UP!
thank-you
                                        Sister Mary Elephant

Tonto, don't go to town!
                                - Bill Cosby

How do you tell if a person likes MooseHead?
look for antler marks on their thighs...

I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.

"Run away! Run away!"
"But sir, don't you mean 'retreat', sir?"
"No! The British never retreat! Run away!"
                                        Monty Python/The Meaning of Life

"How much can a sparrow lift?"
"English or African?"
"Hmm....I don't knOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW...AAAHHHHHH........."
                                        Monty Python/The Holy Grail

 t$Bad unit$Not ready$Bad command $Data$Bad call format$Seek$Non-DOS
 disk$Sector not found$No paper$Write fault$Read fault$General
 Failure$Sharing Violation$Lock Violation$Invalid Disk Change$FCB
 unavailable$Sharing buffer exceeded$Please Insert disk


"I can feel it.  My mind.  It's going, Dave.  I can feel it."


"The human brain, though small, can occaisionally be useful."
                                        - Doctor Who

Hal's Modem Missionary Commandoes are watching you!

Big Brother is watching you!

Our Constitutional guarantee of freedom OF religion is also a guarantee of
freedom FROM religion.                  - Melissa Finley

Confucius Say:
Better to close mouth and appear stupid than to open mouth and remove all doubt.

A fault recognized is half corrected.

A diamond is just a lump of coal that made good under pressure.

Programmer:
 A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate objects.

Anybody can be born right-handed. Only the best of us overcome it.

"The answer is 42."
                                from The Hitchhiker's Guide

"RELAX! It's only ONES and ZEROS!"

"Real programmers don't document.
If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."

"DISK FULL?"

"Dave, I have a projected failure on the Alpha-Echo
three five unit within 72 hours..."

"I want it free and I want it yesterday."

"Anyone care for a jellybaby?"
                                        - Doctor Who

Travel by TARDIS:
It's not necessarily faster, but it is definitely more interesting!


Absolute power is absolutely delightful.

Action's Law
        Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Albrecht's Law
        Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being.

Allen's (or Cann's) Axiom
        When all else fails, read the instructions.

Boren's First Law
        When in doubt, mumble.

Bove's Theorem
        The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal
        increases as the deadline approaches.

Bowie's Theorem
        If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.

Canada Bill JOnes' Motto
        It's morally wrong to allow naive end users to keep their money.

Cann's (or Allen's) Axiom
        When all else fails, read the instructions.

Carlson's Consolation
  Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad example.

Cohn's Law
        The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less
        time you have to do anything.  Stability is achieved when you spend
        all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Correspondence Corollary
        An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your
        data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory.

Cropp's Law
        The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent
        in the office.

Cutler Webster's Law
        There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally
        involved, in which case there is only one.

Deadline-Dan's Demo Demonstration
        The higher the "higher-ups" are who've come to see your demo, the
        lower your chances are of giving a successful one.

Demian's Observation
        There is always one item on the screen menu that is mislabeled and
        should read "ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE".

Denniston's Law
        Virtue is its own punishment.

Dow's Law
In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.

Dr. Caligari's Come-back
        A bad sector disk error occurs only after you've done several hours of
        work without performing a backup.

Estridge's Law
        No matter how large and standardized the marketplace is, IBM can
        redefine it.

First Rule of History
        History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.

Franklin's Rule
        Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will not be
        disappointed.

Gilb's Laws of Unreliability
    1) 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.
    2) Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
    3) Udetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
        errors, which by definition are limited.
    4) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable
        cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work
        done.

Glyme's Formula for Success
        The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you've
        got it made.

Gordon's First Law
  If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.

Government's Law
        There is an exception to all laws.

Green's Law of Debate
        Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.

Gummidges's Law
        The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number
        of statements understood by the general public.

Gumperson's Law
        The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional
        to its desirability.

Harp's Corollary to Estridge's Law
        Your "IBM PC-compatible" computer grows more incompatible with every
        passing moment.

Hinds' Law of Computer Programming
    1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
    2) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
    3) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
    4) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
    5) The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
    6) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
        programmer who must maintain it.
    7) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and
        you will find that programmers cannot write in English.

Jenkinson's Law
        It won't work.

Johnson-Laird's Law
        Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.

Larkinson's Law
        All laws are basically false.

The Last One's Law of Program Generators
        A program generator creates programs that are more "buggy" than
        the program generator.

Lieberman's Law
        Everybody lies; but it doesn't matter, since nobody listens.

Lynch's Law
        When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

Mason's First Law of Synergism
        The one day you'd sell you soul for something, souls are a glut.

May's Law
        The quality of correlation is inverely proportional to the density
        of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)

Mencken's Law
        There is always an easy answer to every human problem -- neat,
        plausible, and wrong.

Meskimen's Law
        There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

Muir's Law
        When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
        everything else in the universe.

Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
        Things get worse under pressure.

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules
        The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the
        time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

Nolan's Placebo
        An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Oliver's Law of Location
        No matter where you are, there you are.

O'Reilly's Law of the Kitchen
        Cleanliness is next to impossible.

Parkinson's Law
        Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson's Law, Modified
        The components you have will expand to fill the available space.

The Peter Principle:
        In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of his
        incompetence.

Pudder's Law
        Anything that begins well will end badly. (Note: The converse of
        Pudder's law is not true.)

Rhode's Corollary to Hoare's Law
        Inside every complex and unworkable program is a useful routine
        struggling to be free.

Rudin's Law
        In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses
        of action, people tend to choose the worst possible course.

Rule of Accuracy
        When working toward the solution of a problem it always helps you to
        know the answer.

Ryan's Law
        Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish
        yourself as an expert.

SNAFU EQUATIONS
    1) Given any problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.
    2) An object or bit of information most needed will be least available.
    3) Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.
    4) Interchangeable devices won't.
    5) In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and
        fail, there will be one solution, simple and obvious, highly visible
        to everyone else.
    6) Badness comes in waves.

Thoreau's Theories of Adaptation
    1) After months of training and you finally understand all of a program's
        commands, a revised version of the program arrives with an all-new
        command structure.
    2) After designing a useful routine that gets around a familiar "bug" in
        the system, the system is revised, the "bug" taken away, and you're
        left with a useless routine.
    3) Efforts in improving a program's "user friendliness" invariable lead
        to work in improving user's "computer literacy".
    4) That's not a "bug", that's a feature!

Thyme's Law
        Everything goes wrong at once.

The Law of the Too Solid Goof
        In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct
        beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
    Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either.
    Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice,
        will spot it immediately.

Unnamed Law
        If it happens, it must be possible.

Weinberg's Corollary
        An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to
        the grand fallacy.

Whitehead's Law
        The obvious answer is always overlooked.

Wilcox's Law
        A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.

Wood's Axiom
        As soon as a still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a
        life-or-death situation, the power fails.

Woodward's Law
        A theory is better than its explanation.

Laws of Project Management
1. No major project is ever installed on time, within budgets, with the
   staff that started it.  Yours will not be the first.
2. Projects progress quickly until they become 90 percent complete, then
   they remain at 90 percent complete forever.
3. One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the
   embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
4. When things are going well, something will go wrong.
   When things just can't get any worse, they will.
   When things appear to be going better you have overlooked something.
5. If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will
   exceed the rate of progress.
6. No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug a system
   inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.
7. A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete
   than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as long.
8. Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly manifests their
   lack of progress.

Goodbye, ciao, auf wiedersehen, aloha, adieu, au revoir, adios, addio, adeus,
dag, adjö, farvel, do widzenia, sbohen, zbogom, hyvasti, over and out,
istenhozzäd, allaha ismarladik, selemat tinggal, adiaû, do zvidània, andi'o,
ila al-laqaa, shalom, seid gezund, sayoonara, kwaheri

WOW! That's great! Far out! Groovy! Amazing! I'm impressed! Sincerely! Boss!
Neat! Swell! Heavy! Intense! Tuff! Bad! Cool! Sharp! Maximum! Super! Choice!
Fair dinkum! Excellent! Decent!

 Cumquat boysenberry Jacuzzi Buster Pointdexter.  Puddle poodle paddle
puddle potpourri yuppy.  Luge camrod spew zoom spiffy voodoo boogie.
Disco zit berserk clone flume tuba. Diode divot booger bunji cord!

Q:  If George Orwell were alive and hacking today, what would be his
    favorite programming language?
A:  C -- because it's double plus good!

Q:  Why did the assembly langauge programmer go to the Christmas party
    dressed in a Halloween costume?
A:  Because Dec 25 = Oct 31

Q:  What is a C programmer's favorite march?
A:  Under the Double Equal

   A motorist was driving through North Carolina and found he was low on gas.
He pulled in at a small-town gas station, had the attendant fill 'er up, paid
the attendant, and waited for him to come back with the change. A couple of
minutes later, he came back with not just the change, but also a jug and a
shotgun.
  The attendant gave the motorist his change and offered the man a drink from
the jug. The motorist politely refused. The attendant pointed the shotgun at
the motorist, gave him the jug, and growled, "When I say 'have a drink', you
HAVE A DRINK - a BIG one!"
  The motorist took a big swallow from the jug. "Ugh!! That's AWFUL!!"
  The attendent took back the jug, gave the gun to the motorist, and said,
"Good.  Now YOU make ME take a drink!"

 "You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you wake up face down
  on the pavement........."

Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory.

               There once was a young laddie named Vern
               Who thought with a BBS t'was his turn
                 Of files he had few
                 But give him his due
               There's much he could teach, and we'll learn.


There is no tyranny in the state of confusion.

No girdle ever cured a pregnancy.

Freedom defined is freedom denied.

Egotism is the drug that soothes the pain of stupidity.


  The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who attacks a system
is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front.
GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #3

Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent
unreliability of the system in which they are used.
GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #5

The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system are the key to
understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle.
GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #6

All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise - which is impossible.
GILB'S LAW OF COMPUTER RELIABILITY #8


Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it
to be sure.

If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it
takes all you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
                        - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin,
please your Majesty ?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning,", the
King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end:
then stop."
                         - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


None of the errors was found.
                              - Compiler message, Micro Data Base Systems


The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.

Designed with your mind in mind by people who have in mind what you
should have in mind.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of
aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.


Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology
   1)  No action is without side-effects.
   2)  Nothing ever goes away.
   3)  There is no free lunch.

Harvard Law
   Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
   temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
   organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Asked what he thought of Western civilization,
 M. K. Gandhi said, "I think it would be an excellent idea".

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas
are lured and then quietly strangled.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom.

Every heart hath its own ache.

A man gazing at the stars is at the mercy of every puddle on the road.

Coincidence is common; it may be the rule.

Condense soup, not books.

Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.

Confusion in a bureaucracy creates jobs.

Conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't,
just from enjoying it.

Conscience is that inner voice that warns us someone may be looking.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truths than lies.

Cooperation is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

Count the day won when, turning on its axis
The earth imposes no additional taxes

Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal, if you are all thumbs.

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs

Creditors have much better memories than debtors.

Crime wouldn't pay, even if the government ran it.

Cut to fit, beat into place.

Daisies of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Dead men tell no tales, but many have biographers who do.

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Democracy: A process by which the people are free to choose who gets the blame.

Deprive a mirror of its silver, and even the Czar won't see his face.

Despite color radar, computers, etc. The 'Farmer's Almanac' still beats News 8.

Digger's Rule: More dirt comes out of a hole than you can get back into it.

Digital circuits are made from analog parts.

Diplomacy is the art of fishing tranquilly in troubled waters.

Diplomat: A person who can be disarming, even though his country isn't.

Direct action produces direct reaction.

Discs travel in packs.

Distance doesn't make you smaller, it does make you part of a larger picture.

Do a silly test and you get a silly result.

Do it now!  There may be a law against it tomorrow.

Do it tomorrow - you've made enough mistakes for one day.

Do married women make the best wives?

Do unto others before they undo you.

Don't be so broad minded that your brains fall out.

Don't believe in flying saucers?  Pinch a waitress!

Don't believe that the model is reality.

Don't comment bad code -- rewrite it!

Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality.

Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers!

Don't despair, your ideal lover is waiting for you around the corner.

Don't ever confuse motion with progress.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, but check for Greek soldiers elsewhere.

Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.

Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.

Don't quit now, we might as well lock the door and throw away the key.

Don't spend your gross salary.

Don't stand up to be counted or someone will take your seat.

Don't stop at one bug.

Don't try to have the last word, you might get it.

Don't wear earmuffs in a land of rattlesnakes.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

Drilling for oil is boring.

Drop the vase and it will become a Ming of the past.

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.

Ecologists believe that a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.

Economics: A study of how men make money and how women spend it.

Editing is a rewording activity.

Education has so much to learn.

Education helps learning capacity.  Ask any college professor.

Efficiency is a highly developed form of laziness.

Egotism is nature's compensation for mediocrity.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Egotists are always me-deep in converstation.

Either this life I'm in is dream-like or this dream I'm in is very lifelike.

Eliminate government waste no matter how much it costs.

Ely's Law: Wear the right costume and the part plays itself.

Engineers can catch misspellings only in words written by non-engineers.

Engineers do it precisely. Technicians do it a lot.

Engineers never die - They just lose their tolerance.

Entropy isn't what it used to be.

Epigrams are macros, since they are executed at read time.

Equal bytes for women.

Equal opportunities are for the dead.

Error is often more earnest than truth.

Established technology tends to exist in spite of new technology.

Even if you did understand the opposite sex, you wouldn't believe it.

Even if you don't believe in principle, you can still collect the interest.

Even paranoids have enemies.

Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.

Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

Every clarification breeds new questions.

Every instructor assumes you have nothing to do but study that instrs. course.

Every new opinion, when it's starting, is precisely in the minority of one.

Every program is part of some other program and rarely fits.

Every silver lining has a cloud around it.

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

Every successful person has had failure, but failure is no guarantee of success.

Every time I close the door on Reality, it comes in through the window.

Every time I lose weight it finds me again!

Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him.

Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.

Everything in a plain brown wrapper is dirty.

Everything is a system.

Everything is controlled by a small evil group - to which I don't belong.

Everything is part of a larger system.

Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.

Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

Examine the contents, not the bottle - The Talmud

Exceptions always outnumber rules.

Excuse me, I'll be just a nanosecond...

Expenditures rise to meet income.

Experience is one thing you have plenty of when you're too old to get the job.

Experience is something you get after you need it.

Experience is the worst teacher. It gives the test before presenting the lesson.

Extremes meet.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Facts to not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than from lack of it.

Fallible men design fallible computers.

Family reunions are all relative.

Federal regulatory agencies are self canceling.

Figures rarely lie; liars frequently figure.

First Rule of Acting: Whatever happens, make it look as if it were intended.

First Rule of the IRS: The wages of sin are unreported.

First law of bridge: It's always your partner's fault.

First law of mathematics: The answer has to look right.

First rule of tinkering:  Save all the parts.

First say NO, then negotiate.

Flattery is the sincerest form of lying.

Flee at once!  All is discovered!

Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground... and missing!

Fools rush in - and get the best seats.

For a holy stint, a moth of the cloth gave up his woolens for lint.

For every vision, there's an equal and opposite revision.

For those of you who think life is a joke, just think of the punchline.

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

Forgive me now, for tomorrow I may no longer feel guilty!

Fortunately, the wheel was invented before the car.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

Four-wheel-drive just means that you will get stuck in more inaccesible places.

Free verse is the triumph of mind over meter.

Friction is a drag.

Friendships, like marriages - are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.

Fudd's First Law: If you push something hard enough it will fall over.

Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything.

GIVE:  Support the helpless victims of computer error.

Gargling twice a day is a good way to see if your neck leaks.

Geneticists are often found cloning around!

Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.

Genius starts at the top and works up.

Geometer turned general - a sphereless leader.

Get off your ASCII.

Give a bald man a comb; he'll never part with it.

Give a difficult task to a lazy man - he will find and easy way to do it.

Give a speculator an inch and he'll build a condo.

Give a woman an inch, she'll park her car in it.

Given any problem containing 'n' equations, there will be 'n+1' unknowns.

Given a thimblefull of facts, we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Go directly to jail.  Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.00.

Go to bed late, get up early, makes a man cross, mean and surly.

God still seems to be helping those who take a big helping for themselves.

Going the speed of light is bad for your age.

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and as hard to sleep after

Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment.

Good leaders are scarce - try following yourself.

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

Got Mole problems?  Call Avogadro at 6.02 X 10

Government corruption is always reported in the past tense.

Graffiti has changed deface of the nation.

Gravity brings me down.

Great wits are to madness near allied/And thin partitions do their bounds divide

Greatness is a transitory experience, it is never consistent.

HANDY EXCUSE: I didn't know you were in a hurry for it.

HANDY EXCUSE: That's the way we've always done it.

HANDY EXCUSE: That's not my department.

HANDY EXCUSE: Wait till the boss comes back and ask him.

HANDY EXCUSE: We don't make many mistakes here.

HELP!  I'm trapped inside a human body!

Habit is the easiest way to be wrong again.

Half of life's experiences are below average in satisfaction.

Half the people in this country are below median intelligence.

Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.

Happiness depends on what you think, not where you are.

Happiness is a warm puppy with an empty bladder.

Happiness is twin floppies.

Hard where?  Soft where?

Hasty schizophrenics do things in a lickity split way.

Have you noticed how those who deal in absolutes...are generally quite humorless

He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.

He keeps differentiating.... flying off on a tangent.

He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

He uses statistics as drunks use a lamppost; support rather than illumination.

He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.

Committee Rules: (1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
                                        -- Harry Chapman

Committee Rules: (2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
 stamps you as being wise.  -- Harry Chapman

Committee Rules: (3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
 others.  -- Harry Chapman

Committee Rules: (4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
                                        -- Harry Chapman

Committee Rules: (5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
 popular--it's what everyone is waiting for.
                                        -- Harry Chapman

Compared with everything else in data processing, paper is cheap; use it. But
 the value of a report decreases as the number of its pages increases.

Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
 wish you weren't.

Consider the Malevolent Universe Theory: it really IS out to get you!


Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Count the day won when, turning on its axis,
 This earth imposes no additional taxes.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.
 (He is also a fool.)  -- Lazarus Long

Cows may come and cows may go, but the bull in this place goes on FOREVER!!!

Crab apples may not be the best kind of fruit; but a tree which every year
 bears a great crop of crab apples is better worth cultivating than a tree
 which bears nothing.

Crane's Rule: There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
 someone, or forbid your kids to do it.

Croll's Query: If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?

Cultivate a consistently pessimistic outlook.

Time travelers cut 'em off at the past!

Damon Runyon's Law: The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the
 strong, but that's the way to bet.

Data Potato ... du wop ... du wop !!!

Deadlock's Law: If the lawmakers make a compromise, the place where it will be
                felt the most is the taxpayer's pocket.

Dear God, make me a good boy, but it's all right with me if you'd like to take
 Your time about it.

1. Do not think dishonestly.
2. The Way is in training.
3. Become aquainted with every art.
4. Know the Ways of all professions.
5. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
6. Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
7. Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
8. Pay attention even to trifles.
9. Do nothing which is of no use.
                                Kensei Miyamoto Musashi, the Ni Ten Ichi Ryo

The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze "Perception and
Sight." Perception is strong and sight weak.
 In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and
to take a distanced view of close things. It is important in strategy to know
the enemy's sword and not to be distracted by insignificant movements of his
sword. You must study this. The gaze is the same for single combat and for
large-scale strategy.
                                Kensei Miyamoto Musashi, the Ni Ten Ichi Ryo

If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield
the long sword you must wield it calmly. If you try to wield it quickly, like
a folding fan or a short sword, you will err by using "short sword chopping."
You cannot cut a man with a long sword using this method.
                                Kensei Miyamoto Musashi, the Ni Ten Ichi Ryo

1. Never be first. 2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything.

5th Law of the Office:
Vital papers will move from where you left them to where you can't find them.

Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Addendum to Murphy's Law:
In precise mathematical terms 1 + 1 = 2, where "=" is a symbol
meaning "seldom if ever."

  An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better
than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
               H. L. Mencken

Anthony's Shop Law:
Any tool dropped will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
               H. L. Menchen

Arcana Coelestica:
  Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank
superior to that obtained by Christ.
               H. L. Menchen

Allen's Distinction:
  The lion and the calf shall lie down together,
but the calf won't get much sleep.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
               H. L. Menchen

Avery's Observation:
  It does not matter if you fall down as long as you
pick up something from the floor while you get up.

Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it, get a larger hammer.

Alan's Corollary:
Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights make an airplane.

Alan's Law:
All things being equal, you lose.

Alan's Law of Research:
The theory is supported as long as the funds are.

Alan's Law of Success:
If at first you succeed, you have no idea what you're doing.

Alan's Corollary on Time:
Time sucks!

Alan's Motto:
It's easier to make true enemies than true friends.

Alan's View on Life:
Life's a bitch, time's a bastard, then you die and get over it.

An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought.

A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.

Always draw your curves then plot the readings.

A Smith and Wesson beats four aces. (Rick Heming's FAVORITE!)

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

A rolling stone gathers momentum.

Ahhhhhhhh,                     I forget what I was going to say.

Arthur's Law of Love:
People to whom you are attracted think you remind them of someone else.

Alexander Bell's Theorem:
When a body is immersed in water, the phone rings.

Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something,
learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is
full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant
without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
    - Bokonon

Brenda's Rule:
At any event, the people whose seats are farthest from the aisle arrive last.

Bolings's Postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Byrne's Law of Concreting:
When you pour, it rains.

Benchley's Law of Distinction:
  There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe
there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.

Bocklage's Law:
He who laughs last probably didn't get the joke.

Berra's Law:
  You can observe a lot just by watching.

Beckhap's Law:
  Beauty times brains equals a constant.

Bedfellows make strange politicians.

Blair's Observation:
The best laid plans of mice and men are usually equal.

Bicycle Law:
  All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
  A 30 pound bicycle needs a 20 pound lock.
  A 40 pound bicycle needs a 10 pound lock.
  A 50 pound bicycle doesn't need a lock.

Beryl's Law:
The "CONSUMER REPORT" on the item will come out a week after you buy the item.

Cheops' Law:
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Conway's Law:
  In every organization there will always be one person
who knows what is going on.
  This person must be fired.

Churchill's commentary on man:
  Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Crane's law:
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Clark's Law: The only way to discover the limits of the
possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Colson's Law:
  When you've got them by the balls, their hearts
and minds will follow.

Cohen's Law:
  What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on
the facts, not the facts themselves.

Corollary to Porkingham's Second Law of Sportfishing:
The more elaborate and costly the equipment, the greater the
chance of having to stop at the fish market on the way home.

Comin's Law:
  People will accept your idea much more readily if you
tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Cornuelle's Law:
Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.

Clarke's First Law:
  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that
something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he
states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Corollary to Law of Applied Confusion:
Not only did the plant forget to ship it,
50% of the time they haven't even made it.

Clarke's Third Law:
  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage.

Cole's Axiom:
  The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.

Clive's Rebuttal to Walker's Law:
If it's clean, it isn't laundry.

Corollary to Hanggi's Law:
The more vital your research, the less people will understand it.

Corollary to Edwards' Time/Effort Law:
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

Cooper's Metalaw:
A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.

Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

Cheit's Lament: If you help a friend in need he's sure to
remember you - the next time he's in need.

Ducharme's Precept:
  Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Drew's Law:
The client who pays the least complains the most.

Doane's Second Law of Procrastination:
The slower one works, the fewer mistakes one makes.

  Democracy is the theory that the common people know what
they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
               H.L. Menchen

de la Lastra's Law:
  After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed
from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong
access cover has been removed.

de la Lastra's Corollary:
  After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws,
it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.

  Don't get mad, get even.

Design flaws travel in groups.

De Nevers' Law of Debate:
Two monologues do not make a dialogue.

Devries' Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter,
the one you don't want will hit the paper.

De Nevers' Law of Complexity:
The simplest subjects are the ones you don't know anything about.

Doyle's Law: No matter how many share a cab,
each puts the full fare on their expense account.

Don`t force it, get a larger hammer.

Dykstra's Law:
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

Diner's Dilemma:
A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning
and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.

Ehrman's Law:
Things will get worse before they get better. Who said they'll get better?

Esther's Law:
The fussiest person will be the one to get the chipped coffee
cup, the glass with lipstick or the hair in the food.

Etorre's observation:
The other line always moves faster.

Ely's Key to Success:
Create a need, and fill it.

Evans' and Bjorn's Law:
No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's First Rule:
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.

Finagle's Second Rule:
Always keep a record of data - it indicates you've been working.

Finagle's Third Rule:
Always draw your curves first, then plot your data.

Finagle's Fourth Rule:
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Finagle's Fifth Rule:
Experiments should be reproducible - they should all fail in the same way.

Finagle's Sixth Rule:
Do not believe in miracles - rely on them.

Finagle's Eighth Rule:
Teamwork is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.

First Postulate of Isomurphism:
  Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.

First Law of Laboratory Work:
  Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.

Forgive and remember.

First Law of Travel:
It always takes longer to get there than to get back.

First Workshop Principle:
The one wrench or drill bit you need will be
the one missing from the tool chest.

Fahnestock's Rule:
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Fiske's Teenage Corollary:
The stomach expands to accomodate the amount of junk food available.

Fett's Law of the Lab:
Never replicate a successful experiment.

Fagin's Rule on Past Prediction:
Hindsight is an exact science.

First Rule of Superior Inferiority:
Don't let your superiors know you're superior to them.

The pet principle:
No matter which side of the door the cat or dog is on, it's the wrong side.

Frothingham's Corollary:
The mountain looks closer than it is.

Frothingham's Fourth Law:
Urgency varies inversely with importance.

Freivald's Law:
Only a fool can reproduce another fool's work.

Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
  If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damned near zero.

Farmer's Credo:
Sow your wild oats on Saturday night, then on Sunday pray for crop failure.

Fools rush in where fools have been before.

Feinberg's Second Principle:
Memory serves its own master.

Finman's Principle:
The one you want is never the one on sale.

Farnsdick's corollary:
  After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.

Gold's Law:
  If the shoe fits, it's ugly.

Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1. An object in motion will be heading in the wrong direction.
2. An object at rest will be in the wrong place.

Goldwyn's Law of Contracts.
  A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Gallois' Revelation:
  If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out
but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a
very expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and no one dares
to criticize it.

Galbraith's Law of Political Wisdom:
  Anyone who says he is not going to resign, four times, definitely will.

Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Gravity doesn`t exist: the earth sucks.

Greer's Third Law:
A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.

Grossman's Misquote:
  Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

Goebel's Law of Rush Hour Traffic:
What speeds up, must slow down.  But who says it's ever gonna speed up?

Gibb's Law:
  Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.

Gerrold's Fundamental Truth:
 It's a good thing money can't buy happiness.We couldn't stand the commercials.

Gerrold's Pronouncement:
  The difference between a politician and a snail is
that a snail leaves its slime behind.

Grossman's Lemma:
Any task worth doing was worth doing yesterday.

Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
  Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong
with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is
wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.

Hadley's Law of Clothing:
If you like it, they don't have it in your size.

Hane's Law:
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Horngren's Observation: (generalized)
  The real world is a special case.

Harrison's Postulate:
  For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Hellrung's Law:
  If you wait, it will go away.

Heisenberg's Principle:
You may know where the Stock Market is going, but not after that.

Hoffer's Law:
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

Harrison's Postulate:
  For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

Hane's Law:
There is no limit to how bad things can get.

Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Hoare's Law:
Inside every large problem is a small problem trying to get out.

Howden's Law:
You remember to mail a letter only when you're nowhere near a mailbox.

Hanggi's Law:
The more trivial your research, the more people will read it and
agree.

Harper's Magazine Law:
You never find an article until you replace it.

Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hamilton's glass cleaning law:
The spot you are scrubbing is always on the other side.

Harver's Law:
  A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.

Hoffstedt's Employment Principle:
Confusion creates jobs.

Hartley's Second Law:
  Never go to bed with anybody crazier than you are.

Hershiser's First Rule:
Anything NEW and/or IMPROVED, isnt.

Hershiser's Second Rule:
The Lable NEW and/or IMPROVED means the price went up.

Horngren's Observation: (generalized)
  The real world is a special case.

Handy Guide to Modern Science:
1.  If it's green or it wiggles, it's biology.
2.  If it stinks, it's chemistry.
3.  If it doesn't work, it's physics.

If it looks easy, it's tough...
If it looks tough, it's impossible.

If you're early, it's cancelled, if you're on time,
it's late, if you're late, you're late.

If there are only two shows on TV worth watching this week,
they will be on at the same time.

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.

Internal consistency is more highly valued than efficiency.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

I ain`t broke, but I`m badly bent.

If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.

It works better if you plug it in.

Interchangable devices won`t.

 In America, it's not how much an item costs that matters,
it's how much you save.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
maybe you just don't understand the situation.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will.

If it says "one size fits all," it doesn't fit anyone.

If it jams, force it.... If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

If you do something which you are sure will meet with
everybody's approval, somebody won't like it.

Jensen's Law:
Win or lose, you lose.

Jacquin's Postulate:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe when legislature is in session.

Jacob's Law:
To err is human - to blame it on someone else is even more human.

Jones's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

Jargon is used as a means of succeeding by not simplifying.

Jacquin's Postulate:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe when legislature is in session.

Jones' Principle:
  Needs are a function of what other people have.

Jones' Law of TV:
The only new show worth watching will be cancelled.

Jones' Law of TV:
The show you've been looking forward to all week will be preempted.

Kitman's Law:
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.

Katz's Law: Men and nations will act rationally
when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Kovac's conundrum:
When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.

Kohn's Corollary:
Two wrongs are only the beginning.

Korman's conclusion:
  The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again.

Katz's Law:
  Men and women will act rationally when all
 other possibilities have been exhausted.

Ken's Law:
A flying particle will seek the nearest eye.

Knight's Law:
  Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

Krueger's Observation:
  A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil
service exam in order to work for the government.

Klipstein's Lament:
  All warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.

Klipstein's Observation:
  Any product cut to length will be too short.

Klipstein's Engineering Law:
Dimensions will always be in the wrong units, such as furlongs per fortnight.

Lewis' Law:
  People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.

Law of Tests: 80% of the final will be on the one
lecture you missed about the one book you didn't read.

Law of Tests:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.

Law of Revelation:
  The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Lewis' Law:
  People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

Law of Reruns:
  If you have watched a TV series only once, and you watch
it again, it will be a rerun of the same episode.

Levy's Ninth Law:
Only God can make a random selection.

Lefty Gomez's Law:
If you don't throw it, they can't hit it.

Langin's Law:
  If things were left to chance, they'd be better.

Law of Tests: When reviewing your notes before an
exam, the most important ones will be illegible.

Lynch's Law:
When the going gets tough...everyone leaves.

Las Vegas Law:
Never bet on a loser because you think his luck is bound to change.

Law of Supermarkets:
The quality of the house brand varies inversely with the size of
the supermarket chain.

Leo Rogers' Commentary:
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Law of Computer programming:
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.

Law of Computer programming:
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Law of Computer programming:
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

Law of Computer programming:
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the maintainer.

Lynch's Law:
  When the going gets tough, everybody leaves.

Law of Research:
  Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Lyall's Conjecture:
  If a computer cable has one end, then it has another.

Lyall's Fundamental Observation:
  The most important leg of a three legged stool is the one that's missing.

Lowe's Law:
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full public view.

Law of Revelation:
  The hidden flaw never remains hidden.

Langsam's Law:
  Everything depends.

Law of Computer programming:
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

Law of Construction:
Cut it large and kick it into place.

Lavia's Law of Tennis:
A mediocre player will sink to the level of his or her opposition.

Law of the Kitchen:
You're always complimented on the item that took the least effort to prepare.

Law of the Office:
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.

Law of the Search: The first place to look for
something is the last place you'd expect to find it.

Let him who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies; but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.

Lee's Law:
In dealing with a body of people, the people will be more tacky than expected.

Lord Balfour's Contention:
Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.


Murphy's Law:
If anything can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's Flu Philosophy:
Even water tastes bad when taken on doctor's orders.

Murphy's Philosophy:
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

Murphy's Flu Law:
If you seem to be getting better, it's your doctor getting worse.

Murphy's First Corollary:
Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Murphy's Second Corollary:
Everything takes longer than you think.

Murphy's Sixth Corollary:
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.

Murphy's Seventh Corollary:
Every solution breeds new problems.

Murphy's Eighth Corollary:
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Tenth Corollary:
Mother Nature is a bitch.

Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Murphy's Flu Philosophy:
Just because your doctor has a name for it doesn't mean he knows what it is.

Murphy's Constant:
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

Murphy's Observation:
When it rains, it pours.

Murphy's Government Law:
If anything can go wrong, it will do so in triplicate.

Murphy's Military Laws:
1. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are.

Murphy's Military Laws:
2. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

Murphy's Military Laws:
3. Friendly fire ain't.

Murphy's Saving Grace:
The worst is enemy of the bad.

Murphy's Comment on the Origin of Murphy's Law:
Murphy's Law was not propounded by Murphy, but by another man of
the same name.

Murphy's Uncertainty Principle:
You can know something has gone wrong only when you make an odd
number of mistakes.

McGowan's Axiom:
If a Christmas gift is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.

Merkin's Maxim:
When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.

Mencken's Metalaw:
  For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution;
and it is always wrong.

Miles' Rule:
Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Maier's Law:
  If the facts do not conform to the theory,
they must be disposed of.

Mark's mark:
  Love is a matter of chemistry;
  sex is a matter of physics.

Maugham's Thought:
  Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy.

Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.

Monday is a hard way to spend one-seventh of your life

Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Matsch's Law:
It's better to have a horrible ending that to have horrors without end

Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

MacDonald's Second Law:
  Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for
a number and give it back to them.

Murray's Rule of Football:
Nothing is ever so bad it can't be made worse by firing the coach.

Miller's Law:
Exceptions prove the rule - and wreck the budget.

Mayne's Law:
Nobody notices the big errors.

McClellan's Law of Cognition:
Only new categories escape the stereotyped
thinking associated with old abstractions.

Munder's Theorem:
For every "10" there are 10 "1's."

Mae West's Observation:
To err is human, but it feels divine.

McClaughry's Law of Zoning:
Where zoning is not needed, it will work perfectly.
Where it is desperately needed, it always breaks down.

McGee's First Law:
It's amazing how long it takes to complete something you are not working on.

McClellan's Law of Cognition:
Only new categories escape the stereotyped thinking associated
with old abstractions.

Meissner's Law:
Any producing entity is the last to use its own product.

Manubay's First Law for Programmers:
If a programmer's modification of an existing program works, it's
probably not what the users want.

Moser's Law of Sports:
 Exciting plays only occur when you're watching
 the scoreboard or buying a hot dog.

Muir's Law:
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to the universe.

Murray's Rule of Baseball:
Whatever can go to New York, will.

MacDonald's Second Law:
  Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for
a number and give it back to them.

Matilda's Sub-Committee Law:
If you leave the room, you're elected.

Matz's Maxim:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Matz's warning:
  Beware of the physician who is great at getting out of trouble.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Nothing is as temporary as that which is called permanent.

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.

No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Newton's Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.

No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

No matter how hard you shop for an item,
after you bought it, you will find it on sale.

No matter what goes wrong,
there is always somebody who knew it would.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

No matter how well you do your job, a superior will seek to modify the results.

Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

Osborn's Law:
Variables won't, constants aren't.

O'Reilly's Spring Cleaning Law:
Cleanliness is next to impossible.

O'Toole's Axiom:
One child is not enough, but two are far too many.

Old and Kahn's Law:
The efficiency of a committee meeting is inversely proportional to the number
of participants and the time spent on deliberations.

Olivers's Law of Location:
No matter where you go, there you are.

O'Brien's Law:
Nothing is ever done for the right reasons.

Only adults have difficulty with child-proof bottles.

Organization is the enemy of improvisation.

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

O'Toole's commentary:
Murphy was an optimist.

Perkin's postulate:
  The bigger they are, the harder they hit.

Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time and
all some of the time but you can't fool Mom.

Peter's Placebo:
  An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

Patton's Law:
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

Porkingham's Fishing Philosophy:
The worse your line is tangled, the better is the fishing around you.

Porkingham's Law:
The time available to go fishing shrinks as fishing season draws near.

Patry's Law:
If you know something can go wrong and prepare, something else will go wrong.

Peer's Law:
  The solution to the problem changes the problem.

Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
 - H. L. Menchen

Pournelle's Law of Costs and Schedules:
  Everything costs more and takes longer.

Pantuso's First Law:
The book you spent $10.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.

Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.

Porkingham's Third Law of Sportfishing:
The worse your line is tangled, the better is the fishing around you.

Python's Principle of TV Morality:
There is nothing wrong with sex on the television,
just as long as you don't fall off.

Pros are those who do their jobs well even when they don`t feel like it

Paulsen's Prophesy:
If anything is used to its full potential, it will break.

Pinto's Law:
Do someone a favor and it becomes your job.

Parker's Observation:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes right to the bone.

Parkinson's Second Law:
Expenditures rise to meet income.

Pudder's Law:
Anything that begins well, ends badly. Anything that begins badly, ends worse.

Price's Law:
If everybody doesn't want it, nobody gets it.

Professor Block's Motto:
Forgive and Remember.

Quien mucho abarca poco aprieta. (Grab much, gain little.)

Rev. Chichester's Law:
If the weather is extremely bad or extremely good, attendance will be down.

Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.

Rule of the Open Mind:
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.

Ralph's Observation:
  It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object
  to realize that you are in a hurry.

Ron's Observation for Teens:
The pimples don't appear until the hour before the date.

Rule of Accuracy:
  When working towards the solution of a problem, it always
helps if you know the answer.

Rudnicki's Rule:
That which cannot be taken apart will fall apart.

Relativity For Children:
Time moves slower in a fast moving vehicle.

Richard's Complementary Rules of Ownership:
  1.  If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
  2.  If you throw it away, you will need it the next day.

Rosenfield's Regret:
  The most delicate component will be dropped.

Running a business is about 95% people and 5% economics.

Rush's Rule of Gravity:
When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall
nearby while all other coins will roll out of sight.

Roger's Law: As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee,
the airliner encounters turbulence.

Rune's Rule:
If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.

Reynold's Law of Climatology:
Wind velocity increases directly with the cost of the hairdo.

Stewart's Law of Retroaction:
  It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Scott's First Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and
corrected, it will be found to be correct originally.

Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.

Schrank's First Law:
If it doesn't work, expand it.

Segal's Law:
  A man with a watch knows what time it is.
  A man with two watches is never sure.

Skoff's Law:
A child will not spill on a dirty floor.

Sevareid's Law:
  The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Scott's Law of Business:
Never walk down a hallway in an office building without a piece
of paper in your hand.

Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.

Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.

Sevareid's Law:
  The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Some men are discovered; others are found out.

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

Spend sufficient time confirming the need and the need will disappear.

Shirley's law:
Most people deserve each other.

Second Law of Applied Confusion:
Truck deliveries that normally take one day will
take five when you are waiting for the truck.

Segal's Law:
  A man with a watch knows what time it is.
  A man with two watches is never sure.

Schmidt's Observation:
  All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap than a thin person.

Skoff's Law:
A child will not spill on a dirty floor.

Second Law of Photography:
The best shots are generally attempted through the lens cap.

Sandiland's Law:
Free time which unexpectedly becomes available will be wasted.

Stenderup's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.

Spark's First Rule:
Strive to look tremendously important.

Seay's Law:
Nothing ever comes out as planned.

Seit's Law of Higher Education:
The one course you need for graduation is not offered your last semester.

Sueker's Note:
  If you need n items of anything, you will have n - 1 in stock.

Student's Law:
Every instructor assumes you have nothing to do but study for his course.

Steele's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something...I believe I'll have another drink.

The one time of the day you lean back and relax is
the one time of the day the boss walks throught the office.

The telephone will ring when you are outside
the door fumbling for your keys.

The slowest checker is always at the quick check-out lane.

The ultimate Law:
  All general statements are false.

Tillis' Organization Principle:
If you file it, you'll know where it is but never need it.
If you don't file it, you'll need it but never know where it is.

Thompson's Theorem:
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

The Pineapple Principle:
The best parts of anything are always impossible to remove from the worst parts.

Thom's Law of Marital Bliss:
The length of a marriage is inversely proportional
to the amount spent on the wedding.

The Roman Rule:
The one who says it cannot be done should
never interrupt the one who is doing it.

The Chi Factor:
Quantity = Quality; or, quantity is inversely proportional to quality.

Thoreau's Law:
  If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention
of doing you good, you should run for your life.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The Sausage Principle:
  People who love sausage and respect the law
should never watch either one being made.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The first Myth of Management:
  It exists.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

The Unspeakable Law:
  As soon as you mention something;
  if it is good, it goes away.
  if it is bad, it happens.

Third Workshop Principle:
Leftover nuts never match leftover bolts.

The Whispered Rule:
  People will believe anything if you whisper it.

The First Law of Wing Walking:
  Never let hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else.

Tood's First Law:
No matter what they're telling you, it's not the whole truth.

The ultimate Law:
  All general statements are false.

The Golden Rule:
  He who has the gold, makes the rules.

The Unspeakable Law:
  As soon as you mention something;
  if it is good, it goes away.
  if it is bad, it happens.

The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.

Thiessen's Law of Gastronomy: The hardness of the butter
is in direct proportion to the softness of the roll.

The pet principle:
No matter which side of the door the cat or dog is on, it's the wrong side.

Thom's Law of Marital Bliss:
The length of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding.

The Arithmetic of Cooperation:
  When you're adding up committees
    there's a useful rule of thumb:
  that talents make a difference,
    and follies make a sum.
               Piet Hein

The Ultimate Wisdom
  Philosophers must ultimately find their true perfection
in knowing all the follies of mankind by introspection.
               Piet Hein

The General Law:
The chaos in the universe always increases.

There is nothing so simple that it can't be done wrong.

Todd's Political Principle:
No matter what they're talking about, they're talking about money.

Thom's Law of Marital Bliss:
The length of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding.

There is nothing so small that it can't be blown out of proportion.

Telesco's Nursing Law:
All the IV's are at the other end of the Hall.

The Pace of Progress: Society is a mule, not a car...
...if pressed too hard, it will throw off its rider.

The client who pays the least complains the most.

TANSTAAFL:
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

The Poker Principle:
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.

The man who can smile when things go wrong
has thought of someone he can blame it on.

Thoreau's Law:
  If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention
of doing you good, you should run for your life.

The Pace of Progress: Society is a mule, not a car...
...if pressed too hard, it will throw off its rider.

The Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

The Watergate Principle:
Government corruption will always be reported in the past tense.

There's little worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

The Seven Ps:
Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

Tom Robbins says...If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

Thoreau says...Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all.

The man who can smile when things go wrong
has thought of someone he can blame it on.

Truman's Law:
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

The Unspeakable Law:
  As soon as you mention something;
  if it is good, it goes away.
  if it is bad, it happens.

Tenenbaum's Law of Replicability:
The most interesting results happen only once.

The Whispered Rule:
  People will believe anything if you whisper it.

The First Law of Wing Walking:
  Never let hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The Sausage Principle:
  People who love sausage and respect the law
should never watch either one being made.

Vique's Law:
  A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

Voltaire's Law:
There is nothing more respectable than an ancient evil.

Van Herpen's Law:
The solving of a problem lies in finding the solvers.

Variables won`t; constants aren`t.

Voltaire says...Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

Vile's Second Law of Linesmanship:
When you're waiting in a long line, the people behind you are
shunted to a new, short line.

Vile's Sixth Law of Linesmanship:
If you stand in one place long enough, you make a line.

Vile's Law of Roadsmanship:
Your own car uses more gas and oil than anyone else's.

Worker's Law:
No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.

Weber's Definition: An expert is one who knows more and more
about less and less until he knows nothing at all.

Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross-references.

When you finally see light at the end of the tunnel,
it will probably be a train coming toward you.

Wiler's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.

When you finally see light at the end of the tunnel,
it will probably be a train coming toward you.

When all else fails, read the documentation!

When in darkness or in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout.

When your work speaks for itself, don`t interrupt.

When the plane you're on is on time, your connecting flight is late.

Witten's Law:
  Whenever you cut your fingernails,
you will find a need for them an hour later.

Wiker's Law:
  Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Willoughby's Law:
When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will.

Weiler's Law:
 Nothing is impossible for the man who does not have to do it himself.

Wright's First Law of Quality:
Quality is inversely proportional to the
time left for completion of the project.

Weinberg's Second Law:
  If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Woltman's Law:
  Never program and drink beer at the same time.

Whistler's Law:
You never know who's right, but you always know who's in charge.

Wallace's Observation:
Everything is in a state of utter dishevelment.

Waldrop's Principle:
The person not here is the one working on the problem.

Wagner's Law of Sports Coverage:
When the camera isolates on a male athlete, he will spit, pick or scratch.

Walter's Law of Politics:
A fool and his money are soon elected.

Wright's Law:
A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect
can only advise his client to plant vines.

Woodside's Grocery Principle:
The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.

When a man laughs at his misfortunes, he loses a great
many friends. They never forgive the loss of their perogative.
               H. L. Mencken

Wyszowski's Law:
  No experiment is reproducible.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country,
it is a sure sign he expects to be paid for it.
               H. L. Menchen

Wagner's Law of Sports TV: When the camera isolates on a male
athlete, he will either spit, pick or scratch.

What you don't do is always more important than what you do.

You can't win. You can't break even. You can't even quit the game.

  You can lead a man to slaughter,
but you can't make him think.

  You can't fight the law of conservation of energy
but you sure can bargain with it.

You can tune a piano, but you can`t tuna fish.

Young's Law:
All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Young's Second Law:
It is the dead wood that holds up the tree.

You can lead a horse to water;
get him to float on his back & you`ve got something.

Young's Principle of Individuality:
Everybody wants to peel their own banana.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Zymurgy's Labor Law:
People are always available for work in the past tense.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.

Zadra's Law of Biomechanics:
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.


It is hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys.

"The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran
him over."   - Another true accident report.

BAXTER'S FIRST LAW: Government intervention in the free market always
                    leads to a lower national standard of living.

I know engineers.  They love to change things. - Dr. McCoy

     _O_/
    / O     Hang Ten!
     / \    SURF'S UP!
____/__/____.

"There are two things I dislike in a person - absentmindedness and... and...
. . . I can't remember the other one."

"I may be schizophrenic, but at least I'll always have each other."

If it ain't broke....don't fix it!

"Lead, follow, or get the Hell out of the way!"

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic,
and so am I.

I live in my own little world... but that's okay. I know everyone there.

Boss - "You are twenty minutes late again. Don't you know what time we start
        work at this office?"
New Employee - "No, they're always at it when I get here!"

"Frustration is not having anyone to blame but yourself." --Bits & Pieces

Why was time invented you ask? So that everything wouldn't happen all at once!

  "He who hesitates is lost."
                 --Unattributed -

 If at first you don't succeed, go back and read the instructions!

"I feet a great disturbance in the force, Like millions of voices cried
out in terror, then were silenced."
  -Obi Wan

"R2-D2, where are you?"
   - C-3P0

"Ben.... Dagobah.... Jedi Master ... Yoda..."
   - Luke Skywalker

"And I thought they smelled bad... on the Outside!"
   -Han Solo

"So be it, Jedi!"
   -Emperor Palpatine

"You may fire when ready."
   -Grand Moff Tarkin

"Aren't you a little short for a Storm Trooper?"
   -Princess Leia

"Bring 'em on, I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around!"
   -Han Solo

"Going somewhere, Solo?"
   -Greedo

"I like Captain Solo right where he is"
   -Jabba the Hut

"Oh he's not dead, at least not yet."
   -Obi Wan

"Help me Obi Wan, You're my only hope!"
   -Princess Leia

"Never tell me the odds!"
   -Han Solo

"Asteroids do not concern me, Captain Needa"
   -Darth Vader

"Who's scruffy lookin'?"
    -Han Solo

"What if he dies?, He's no use to me dead!"
    -Boba Fett

"I am sorry, they landed right before you did, I had no choice!"
    -Lando Calrissian

"Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?"
    -Han Solo

"Hey! It's Me!"
    -Han Solo

"If I told half of the things I've heard about this Jabba, you'd probably short
circut"
    -C-3P0

"Use the Force, Luke"
    -Obi Wan Kenobi

"Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?"
    -Princess Leia Organa

"So, you have a sister."
    -Darth Vader

"Vader's on that ship!"
    -Luke Skywalker

"I like Captain Solo right where he is"
    -Jabba the Hut

"Great shot kid, that was one in a million"
    -Han Solo

"Luke, you will go to the Dagobah system"
  -OBI WAN KENOBI

"Wait...I got a plan"
  -Han Solo

"Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter"
  --Yoda

"If you only knew the power of the Dark side of the Force"
  -Darth Vader

"Remember, the Force will be with you... always"
  -Obi Wan Kenobi

 "Search your feelings Luke, You know it to be true!
   -Darth Vader

"I'd Rather Kiss A Wookie!"
   -Princess Leia

 "You're a bloodsucking vampire!  Wait'll I tell Mom!"   - Lost Boys

"...awwww.... Mondo STRAIGHT!"
                                        Blazing Saddles

"Bring out the Holy Hand Grenade!"
                                        Monty Python's Holy Grail

  "Tie me kangaroo down, boys...
  "Tie me kangaroo down...
  "Then get the marmalade and a yer sister...
  "And really go to town..."
        --- old Australian folk song

 "Oh, the RAM-chip prices drag me down, doo-dah, doo-dah
  My AT eats them by the pound, doo-dah, doo-dah, day
  Gonna run all night, gonna run all day
  Put my parts in a plain brown bag
  Get it together some day!"

Welcome to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Today we are going to study radiation.
Can you say radiation?
Nice try...
Now we're going to do a lab experiment.
Let's put Mister Hamster in the microwave.
zzzttt
Pop goes the weasel!

I'm not mad at my enemies...after all, I made them!
- Red Skelton

 "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
                                       J. Joplin

Now is the time that men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in
the kitchen; the Legislature is in session and no man's property is safe.
                                   -- Daniel Webster

 Love is:  Never having to say "It's YOUR turn to do that"

sna-fu (sna-foo') Slang adj. In a state of utter confusion; chaotic.
- v.t. -fued, -fu-ing. To put into a confused or chaotic condition.
--n. Anything which is confused or chaotic. [From the initial letters
of the words "Situation Normal. All Fouled Up"]

"Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles"
 - Pat Paulsen -

The world is an 8000 mile in diameter spherical pile of dirt.

"Don't take this shit serious, cause you don't know WHEN you're
 gonna go.  So you'd better have some fun and plenty of it."
                                      Richard 'Mudbone' Pryor

Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian.

A little pain never hurt anyone.

A verbal contract isn't worth
the paper it's written on.

"There are two things I dislike in a person - absentmindedness and... and...
. . . I can't remember the other one."                      --Pete Yazzolino

"I may be schizophrenic, but at least I'll always have each other."
                      --Randy Harrison

"I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure."
                --John N. Kock

"You simply MUST stop taking advice from other people."
                  --Melissa Timberman

"I'm going to commit suicide...or die trying."
                  --Michael Burgess

"I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it left."
                 --R. E. Atkinson

"I have found of twenty-five nations eating flesh largely, nineteen had a high
cancer rate and only one had a low rate, and that of thirty-five nations eating
little or no flesh, none had a high rate."  -Rollo Russell, Causation of Cancer

If it ain't broke....don't fix it!

Voice on Phone-"John Smith is sick and can't attend classes today. He asked me
to notify you." Professor-"Who is this speaking?"  Voice-"Uh... my roommate."

"Baseball is 90 per cent perspiration; the other half is mental."
                     --Yogi Berra

Sign on New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's desk:
 "Lead, Follow, or Get The Hell Out Of The Way!"

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic,
and so am I.

I live in my own little world... but that's okay. I know everyone there.

"It's really amazing. People are dying nowadays who never did before!"
                      --Mark Mayfield

Boss - "You are twenty minutes late again. Don't you know what time we start
        work at this office?"
New Employee - "No, they're always at it when I get here!"

"Automatic" simply means that you can't repair it yourself.  --Mary H. Waldrip

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying." --Fran Lebowitz

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
              --Eleanor Roosevelt

"A dog is a dog except when he's facing you - then he's Mr. Dog."
                       --Haitian farmer

"Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius."  --George Bernard Shaw

"Be yourself. Who else is better qualified?" --Frank J. Giblin II

"Be happy. It is a way of being wise."
           --Collette

"Frustration is not having anyone to blame but yourself." --Bits & Pieces

"Don't be so humble - you're not that great!"  --Golda Meir

"If you think nobody cares you're alive, try missing a couple of payments!"
--Earl Wilson

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
--Marie Curie

"If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the
airport!"             --George Winters

"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering the
farmer's daughter."      --Julias H. Comroe

"Kids are always the only future the human race has." --William Saroyan

"Isn't it strange? The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take
economists seriously."     --Cincinatti Enquirer

"Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?"
 --Tom Stoppard

"A conference is just an admission that you want somebody to join you in your
troubles."          --Will Rogers

"Nothing is waste that makes a memory."
 --Ned Rorem

"A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions."
 --Wilson Mizner

  What do you give the girl thats got everything?
  PENICLLIN!!!!!

  Q: anybody know what a cookie (really) is???? . . . .
  A: a Virgin doughnut!!! . . . . .

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

I am responsible only to God and history. - Gen. Francisco Franco

        THE WOMBAT
The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.

It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted to my kind of
fooling"               - R. Frost -

                        Pittsburgh Driver's Test
(7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a
    steady left tail light.  This means
        (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to
            call the problem to the driver's attention.
        (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
        (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
        (d) the driver is from out of town.
 The correct answer is (d).  Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to
signal turns.

Sitting in my oriface
Staring at the dooriface
And allowing through inaction
On my part the paperwork
To build up to my asshole.
I wonder what it feels like
To be a frog?
                                        - thoughts of Commander Q'luude

Beware of the "Black Swan" fallacy. Deductive logic is tautological, there is
no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as
readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you - with
perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computers called this the "Gigo"
Law, i.e., "Garbage in, garbage out." Inductive logic is much more difficult -
but can produce new truths.                    -- Lazarus Long

When the need arises - and it does - you must be able to shoot your own dog.
Don't farm it out - that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse.
          -- Lazarus Long

  Major projects are completed by performing a series of minor tasks.

The secret ballot is a beautiful system than permits you to claim you never
voted for the guy.                -Doug Larson

The stylus is more potent than the elongated projectile.

  May the hair on your feet never catch fire.

  All things are relative.
  All relatives are things.
  My relatives TOOK my things.
  My things are with my relatives.


To be is to do
               I. Kant
To do is to be.
               J.  P.  Sartre
Do be do be do.
               F.  Sinatra.

...it's almost unAmerican what some of those religious stations can do to a
person. I know a gal up in Kensett who dropped completely out of the local
drinking society, even gave up good bootleg whiskey, just because she got
hooked on the PTL Club. Sent money to Pat Robertson's campaign fund and
everything. She's still in analysis.
                                - thoughts of Commander Q'luude

I've slowed some of the gospel rhythm and blues stuff down and played it
backwards, too, and you can make out some of the messages. One says "Vote
Republican," and another says "F--- Communism," but the one that scares me is
the one that says "Send Money."  Bugs me that I didn't think of it.
                                - thoughts of Commander Q'luude

3.5 disks are more expensive, yes! But you can put the 3.5's in your shirt
pocket so everybody can spot you as a hacker in WalMart. I tried putting a
5.25 in my left rear pocket and all that happened was I was propositioned in
the men's restroom.
                                - Alan Rolf

The mind is an iceberg - it floats with only one-seventh of its bulk above
water.                           - Sigmund Freud

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.
                                 - George Bernard Shaw

  What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
  I don't know and I don't care.

I am proud to say I don't wear a bra, but my car does.
                                        - Jon Lavasque

By today's standards and definitions, the North American indians, as a whole,
had a very inferior immigration policy and did not, by any description, pay
much attention to national defense. Therefore, they were an inferior race of
beings who spent too much time on producing food and having a good time. Much
more of their national budget should have been spent on armament and defense
and they should have been more involved in small diversionary wars well outside
their immediate national boundaries (Asia or Middle East).
                                - Alan Rolf

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to
keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange
their prejudices once in a while.
                                - Luther Burbank

Origin of the GW in GWBASIC:  the GW stands for Gee Whiz

"Programming is a series of discoveries leading you from one plateau of
 understanding to another... The trick is not to step in the stuff between the
 plateaus."

"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it;
malice may distort it; but there it is."               - Winston Churchill

  "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes
   hurtling down the highway."
                             ---- Andrew Tanenbaum, Computer Networks

     *  An Irishman is never at peace except when he's fighting.

 *  An Irishman will die before letting himself be buried outside of Ireland.

     *  May you never live to see your wife a widow.

     *  Gentlemen, it appears to be unanimous that we cannot agree.

     *  God bless the Holy Trinity.

 The most unpleasant thing about him is that when he isn't drunk, he's sober.

     *  Talk about thin!  Well, you're thin. and I'm thin, but he's as thin
        as the pair of us put together!

     *  Half the lies our opponents tell about us are not true.

     *  This piece is chock full of omissions.

     *  A man cannot be in two places at once, unless he is a bird.

     *  I marvel at the strength of human weakness.

     *  Your Honner, I was sober enough to know I was dhroonk.

     *  You couldn't get me on Mars if it were the last place on earth.
          -- Erma Cohen

     *  If Roosevelt were alive today, he'd turn over in his grave.
        -- attributed to Samuel Goldwyn and umpteen others

     *  I wish the Arabs and the Jews would settle their differences like
        Christian gentlemen.  -- attributed to Arthur Ballour and others

     *  Football is an incredible game.  Sometimes it's so incredible, it's
        unbelievable. -- Tom Landry

     *  Listen to that!  Eighty thousand football fans and not one of them
        is making a sound!  Broadcast of NFC football game.

     *  All generalizations are bad. -- R.H. Grenier

     *  The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small."
        -- Woody Allen

     *  Please accept my resignation.  I don't want to belong to any club
        that will have me as a member.  -- Groucho Marx

     *  Cocaine isn't habit forming.  I should know -- I've been using it
        for years. -- Talullah Bankhead

     *  If you live to the age of a hundred, you have it made because very
        very few people die past the age of a hundred. -- George Burns

     *  Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it. -- Irene Peter

     *  Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
        -- Josh Billings

     *  Wagner's music is better than it sounds. -- Mark Twain

     *  People are more than fun than anybody. -- Dorothy Parker

     *  I don't want to be a millionaiare.  I just want to live like one.
        -- Joe E. Lewis

     *  If we're gonna win, we have to play up to and beyond our potential.
        -- Don Nelson

     *  Of course I can keep secrets.  It's the people I tell them to that
        can't keep them.  -- Anthony Haden-Guest

     *  It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are. -- anonymous

     *  Dear Teacher:  Please excuse my son Joseph's absence on Firday as it
        was Ash Wednesday.  Signed My Mother.

 From now on we shall offer police jobs to qualified women regardless of sex.
     -- A New Jersey town's affirmitive action statement

     *  The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -- W. C. Fields

     *  I don't care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.
        -- Josh Billings

     *  I distinctly remember forgetting that. -- Clara Barton

     *  We must believe in free will.  We have no choice.
        -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

 There's nothing wrong with incest just as long as you keep it in the family.
 -- Milton Mayer

     *  Why, that's the most unheard-of thing I've ever heard of.
        -- Joseph Mc Carthy

     *  I have had no real gratification or enjoyment more than my neighbor
        on the next block who is worth only half a million.
        -- last words of railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt

     *  Excuse me for not answering your letter, but I've been so busy not
        answering letters that I couldn't get around to not answering yours
        in time. -- Groucho Marx

     *  Monotheism is a gift from the gods.  -- unknown

     *  Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. -- unknown

     *  It pays to remember your social obligations.  If you don't go to
        other people's funerals, they won't go to yours. -- unknown

     *  After they got rid of capital punishment, they had to hang
        twice as many people as before. -- unknown

     *  1. Resolved by this Council, that we build a new Jail.
        2. Resolved, that the new Jail be built out of the material
           of the old Jail.
        3. Resolved, that the old Jail be used until the new Jail is finished.
           -- passed by the Board of Councilmen in Canton, Mississippi

automated translator program demo....
.
   "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."
So they ran it through, and it printed
    "Gnobmar foobar glotz"  (or something thereabouts).
Nobody could read it, so they ran it in reverse.  It came out:
    "The wine is good, but the meat is rotten."

I sneezed a sneeze
  Into the air
It fell to earth
  I know not where
But hard and cold
  Were the looks of those
In whose vicinity
  I snoze!

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can
contain without bursting one's clothes.          - Mark Twain

Give us the fortitude to endure the things which cannot be changed, and the
courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to know
one from the other.                     - Bishop Oliver J. Hart

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most
delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they
will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously
until death do them part.          -- George Bernard Shaw

Nature is benignly indifferent; among men, indifference is the worst
brutality of all.

Where have all the perverts gone..
 Long time paaa-aaassing..
Where have all the perverts gone...
  Long time ago...
Where have all the perverts gone?
  Gone toorgies, every one...
When will they ever learn?
When will they eeeeee-ver learn?

Horse sense is what a horse has that keeps him from betting on people.
                                - W.C. Fields

If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist
psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called "behaviorist
psychology." So they are wrong from scratch - as clever and as wrong as
phlogiston chemists.                                  -- Lazarus Long

If it had been done right the first time, it wouldn't be called RE-search.

If a little knowledge is dangerous,  where is the man who has so
much as to be out of danger?                      -- Thomas Huxley

  Sociology is that descriptive pseudo-science that disguises its
  uncertainties in statistical mists as it battens on the narrow
  gap of information between psychology and anthropology.    - Trevanian

  The summit of Mt. Everest is composed of marine limestone.

  This page left intentionally blank.

 If you do not understand my silence, you will not understand my words.

It is better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.

The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.

Mir: "            O wonder!
     How many goodly creatures there are here!
     How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
     That has such people in't!
Pros: 'Tis new to thee."
 -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest", V, i, 181-184

  It's all so easy now
  As we lie here in the dark
  Nothing interferes - it's obvious
  How to beat the fears
  That threaten to snuff out
  The spark of our love.

Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells AWFUL.  - Mister Spock

Always store beer in a dark place.          -- Lazarus Long

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make
war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This
is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular
diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it
is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must - never
for sport.                                      -- Lazarus Long

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments          -- Earl Wilson

If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love
and making a baby with her hearty help, I've never heard of it.
                                                      -- Lazarus Long

Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs - sex especially. When they
are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any
invasion of their privacy. Oh sure, they'll make mistakes - but that's their
business, not yours. (You made you own mistakes, did you not?)
                                               -- Lazarus Long

As you pass through life be as the prow of a boat, which cuts cleanly through
the water, but after passing leaves no trace.
          -- Confucius

The fundamental impossibility of changing the past accounts for
those very important moral sentiments -- regret and remorse.

 Sociology is that descriptive pseudo-science that disguises its uncertainties
in statistical mists as it battens on the narrow  gap of information between
psychology and anthropology.                          - Trevanian

 Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean,
 Higher than any bird ever flew,
 Longer than there've been stars up in the heaven
 I've been in love with you.

        Exerpts from "The Hacker's Dictionary"
Autobogophobia:    A fear of becoming bogotified.
Computer Literate: Young, intelligent, and employable.
Crufty:            Poorly built, overcomplicated.
Fried:             A piece of equipment that will find use as a
                   paperweight or doorstop.

 "The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice
  and tragedy.  What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
  master calls a butterfly."       --  Richard Bach, "Illusions"

 "Don't be dismayed at good-byes.  A farewell is necessary before you
  can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is
  certain for those who are friends."   -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight,
  someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight.
Somewhere out there someone's singing a prayer
  that we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there.

    "You know," said the cannibal after dinner, "my wife certainly makes
     good soup, but I'm sure going to miss her."

The best theology would need no advocates: it would prove itself.
                                                - Karl Barth

Too many young people itch for what they want without scratching for it.
                                               - Tom D. Taylor

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
                                            - Ashleigh Brilliant

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which
permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work
of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and
almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny
minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a
society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as
"bad luck."                              -- Lazarus Long

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
          -- Lazarus Long

When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your
attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem.
For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up
to him.          -- R.A. Lafferty

 "Don't be dismayed at good-byes.  A farewell is necessary before you
  can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is
  certain for those who are friends."   -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates
and no measures you wan to vote for... but there are certain to be ones you
want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will
rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning
fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way.
This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending
the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise
requires.          -- Lazarus Long

    "We're (one thousand) one hundred and seventeen miles
    from Chicago, we've got a full pack of cigarettes, half
    a tank of gas, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
.
    "Hit it!"

When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do,
so long as what they want to do isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsocial
or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing
what they don't want to do, they won't.
                               - James Could Cozzens

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.          -- Lazarus Long

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime.
For a first offense, that is.          -- Lazarus Long

The prime criteria of scientific taste are a sense for the important problem
and an appreciation of stylish solutions.               - Harriett Zuckerman

    If a cluttered desk is an indication of a cluttered mind....
what is an empty desk an indication of?

                  Of all the things that I have lost
                    I miss my mind the most.

    Bricks and boards
    Will stow my hoards
    But shelves will never please me. ...

  "Never trust a language over 30"

  "Blank paper is God's way of telling you it's not so easy being God."

"Plagiarize.... Don't let another's work evade your eyes....
 Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, and
 Plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize....
 (But remember always to call it please, 'Research.')"
                                                  -   Tom Lehrer, "Lobochevsky"

The god of publishers is Mercury, who is also the god of thieves.

There is an old Persian tale of the bowman who had a bow which shot straighter
than any he'd made before. He loved it so much that he decided to improve it.
So he carved it cunningly with figures of hunting gods, prey, beautiful women,
and his mother. And the next time he fitted an arrow -- it broke.

"Good enough is the enemy of the best."

a foot race between Brezhnev and Nixon in which Tricky Dick came in first:
    "Yesterday, in in international athletic competition among world leaders,
     our own Leonid Illitch Brezhnev won the coveted silver place award.  The
     American president Nixon crossed the finish line in next-to-last place."

              Happy Birthday to you
              If you sing this we'll sue
              'Cause we own the copyright to
              Happy Birthday to you.

Education consists of casting false pearls before real swine.

Masochist:  "Hurt me! Beat me! make me write bad checks!"
Sadist:     "Heh heh heh.  No."

 "At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to do........"
                                                - Sarek of Vulcan

"Shana, they bought their tickets; they knew what they were getting
into.  I say: Let 'em crash!"              <Airplane I, the movie>

legitimate operands for the VMS "make" command........
   hay      - While the sun shines?
   haste    - Not waste?
   time     - She's not your type!
   sense    - Not on a VAX you won't!
   progress - (an important product)
   mountain - Not from this molehill, I won't

"if it wasn't for venitian blinds,
it would be curtains for all of us!"
[discalimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]


Why is it that so many lawyers have broken noses?
From chasing parked ambulances.

Where can you find a good lawyer?
In the cemetary

What's the difference between a lawyer and a gigolo?
A gigolo only screws one person at a time.

What's the difference between a lawyer and a vampire?
A vampire only sucks blood at night.

How do you save a drowning laywer?
Throw him a rock.

Person 1:  Do you know how to save a drowning lawyer?
Person 2:  No.
Person 1:  GOOD!

Hildago was defeated at Guadalajara. The rebel army was captured
on is way through the mountains. All were courtmartialed and
shot, except Hildago, because he was a priest. He was handed over
to the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him
to the army where he was then executed.

There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.

No artist ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
                                - Jean Giradoux

A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.

There are two kinds of lawyers, those who know the law
and those who know the judge.

"I'll never discuss my lawyer's character in his absence,
so let's discuss his absence of character!        -  Michael Lara

"There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest. For example, when he filed his
income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary as 'unearned
income.'"                                   - ibid

Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree.

Why was time invented you ask? So that everything wouldn't happen all at once!

"It all hinges on your definition of 'a good time'!" - L. Borgia

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.

Big Brother is watching.

The best laid plans often go a fowl. - Wile E. Coyote

The best prophet of the future is the past.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one..

The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.

You can observe a lot by watching.

Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.

The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.

The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep.

Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

The heart is wiser than the intellect.

"It is bad luck to be superstitious."

Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.

You live and you learn - or you don't live long.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

The mark of a true M.B.A. is that he is often wrong, but seldom in doubt.

The minute a man is convinced that he is interesting, he isn't.

You may be recognized soon.  Hide.

"Do not adjust your set.  WE are in control."

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

Say No, Then Negotiate.

The only thing worse than a sorcerer is a sorcerer's apprentice. - M. Mouse

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.

The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if you say yes.

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

The stranger, the better...

Why should I have to pay a troll just to cross a bridge? - B.G. Gruff

"Go to Hell!" or other direct insult is all a snoopy question rates.

CPU time flies when you're having fun.

The universe is laughing behind your back.

"He was so crooked you could use him to pull corks with..."

"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes..."

The white zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers only.

The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!

"If you can't convince them, confuse them."  - Harry S. Truman

Did you know that no-one ever reads these things?

How you look depends on where you go.

You'll ALWAYS overlook one of those pins in a new shirt.

You're being followed.  Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.

Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.

Don't hate yourself in the morning - sleep till noon.

Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.

Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.

Don't panic.

Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.

Don't try to have the last word. You might get it.

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.

You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.

186,282 miles per second; it's not just a good idea, it's the LAW.

"...and I came to regard men as a strange sort of delicacy."

Boy:  A noise with dirt on it.

Kin:  An affliction of the blood

Mad:  Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence

In a family argument, if it turns out you are right - apologize at once!

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - A. Einstein

Of all the people I have met, you are certainly one of them.

...And then the fun began. - N. Bonaparte

Coward:  One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Pi are round. Cornbread are square.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

"What hallucinations?"

If at first you don't succeed, give up; no use being a damn fool.

"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

"Play it, Sam."

A day for firm decisions!!!!!  Or is it?

Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not.

Always yield to temptation, for it may not pass your way again.

Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.

"A billion dollars isn't what it used to be." - Nelson Bunker Hunt

"Submitted for your approval..."

"I can feel it.  My mind.  It's going, Dave.  I can feel it."

Success is simply a matter of luck.  Ask any failure.

Chicken Little was right.

"God is subtle but he is not malicious" - A. Einstein

Good day to let down old friends who need help.

Good information is hard to get. Doing anything with it is even harder.

Good news.  Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.

Read everything with your eyes closed and it will all make sense.

Condense soup, not books!

My decision is *Maybe* and that's final.

Predestination was doomed from the start.

Creditors have much better memories than debtors.

Hindsight is an exact science.

Words must be weighed, not counted.

Fine day to throw a party.  Throw him as far as you can.

Fine day to work off excess energy.  Steal something heavy.

Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.

Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.

Here is further away than you think...

I've given up reading books;  I find it takes my mind off myself.

Life can be profitable, if you know the odds. - Ripley

Life is a series of rude awakenings. - R. V. Winkle

Life is full of little surprises. - Pandora

Love is sentimental measles.

Nice guys get sick.

Some executives call passing the buck delegating authority.

Some men are discovered;  others are found out.

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.

An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.

Excellent day to have a rotten day.

Excellent time to become a missing person.

A seminar on Time Travel will be held two weeks ago.

Remember that two wrongs do not make a right - but that three lefts do.

Remember, even if you win the rat race - you're still a rat.

Remember: No matter where you go; there you are.

"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."

Iffen it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Iffen it ain't cooked, don't serve it.

Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.

Someone whom you reject today, will reject you tomorrow.

"Where do 'cannot' and 'must' meet on the graph?"

Never appeal to a man's "better nature".  He may not have one.

Never drink from your finger bowl - it contains only water.

Never eat anything larger than your head.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.

Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.

Never tell a lie...Unless lying is one of your strong points.

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.

Superior firepower is an invaluable tool when entering into negotiations.

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise.

Money is truthful.  If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.

Long live The Great Electronic Underground!

To give happiness is to deserve happiness.

Such stuff dreams are made of. - S. Beauty

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Nothing works, and nobody cares.

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

A lie in time saves nine.

Brain:  The apparatus with which we think that we think.

Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.

It is better to copulate than never.

It is better to wear out than to rust out.

It isn't what you know that counts, it's what you think of in time.

Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.

If it an't broke, Don't fix it -- Unless you are a consultant.

If it is not there, it does not exist.

If it's more than you need, it's greed.

A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls--" - M. Ali

Bank error in your favor.  Collect $200.

"All's fair in love and war" - What a contemptible lie!

A clean, neat, and orderly work place is a sure sign of a sick mind.

Reality is achieved by the indefinite enumeration of objects.

Reality stems from the line printer.

Reality sure is big...

It looks like an optical illusion, but it isn't.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.

Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.

Communists do it without class.

When uncertain, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

When you get there, there's no there there.

Dawn:  The time when men of reason go to bed.

Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.

"Hang up your logic over there."

Things are more like they used to be than they are now.

Things will be bright in P.M.  A cop will shine a light in your face.

Thank you for observing all safety precautions.

Do not drink coffee in early A.M.  It will keep you awake until noon.

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

A woman, like a good piece of music, should have a solid end. - F. Schubert

Antonym:  The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.

A horse may be forced to drink but a pencil must be lead...

Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you! - Y. Arafat

A motion to adjourn is always in order.

Xerox never comes up with anything original.

Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.

No parking in the red zone.

If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less.

People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.

Computer: a device which is designed to drive human beings insane.

Computers are not intelligent.  They only think they are.

There are more old drunkards than old doctors.

There are no rules.

There's a time to fight, and a time to hide out! - B. Cassidy

There's an answer to every problem.  Sometimes it's "No".

There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.

America is the Land of Opportunity if you're a businessman in Japan.

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.

Does history record *any* case in which the majority was right?

It's been nice meeting you ... and even nicer seeing you leave.

It's clever, but is it art?

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

It's not whether you win or lose -- It's how you place the blame.

It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be forgotten.

This is a *dangerous* place.

This will be a memorable month - no matter how hard you try to forget it.

Kids? Who said anything about kids? - Conan

"I seem to be having problems with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent

Those who can't write, write manuals.

Raising pet electric eels is gaining a lot of current popularity.

"I smell memory leakage. Someone around here is not paying attention."

Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you when things go wrong.

Most "scientists" are bottle washers and button sorters.

What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!

What are friends for? - R.M. Nixon

What if they gave a war and only one side came? - Lucifer

What orators lack in depth they make up in length.

What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.

What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.

What's the point-spread on World War III? - R. Reagan

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing."

Caution:  breathing may be hazardous to your health.

Civilization is fun!  Anyway, it keeps me busy!!

Could I have a drug overdose?

Do I have a lifestyle yet?

Wasting time is an important part of living.

History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.

History doesn't repeat itself.  Historians merely repeat each other.

Shouldn't you be doing something useful?

Accuracy:  The vice of being right.

Natural laws have no pity.

Beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.

Reputation:  what others are not thinking about you.

Travel important today;  Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.

It was a dark and stormy night ...

He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.

He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had.

He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

Many a family tree needs trimming.

Only a sadistic scoundrel or a fool tells the truth on social occasions.

Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.

Pity the poor corpuscle, for he labors in vein.

They never let you live it down. One little mistake! - Nero

If you can't dazzle 'em with dexterity, baffle 'em with bullsh*t!

 "That is I, that is Alex, and my three droogs, Pete, Georgie, and Dim."
                                                - A Clockwork Orange

"So, what's it to be then, eh?"
                                                - A Clockwork Orange

 Imagine that? Me! Working for you!

Laws of Computer Programming
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
    programmer who must maintain it.
(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will
    find that programmers cannot write in English.
                                           SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2

Give me a home where the buffalo roam,
and you've got a room full of buffalo chips.
      Sitting Bull's Observation

Gilb's Laws of Reliability
(1) Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
(3) The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who attacks a system
    is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front.
(5) Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the
    inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used.
(6) The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system are the key
    to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle.
(7) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
    errors, which by definition are limited.
(8) All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise-which is impossible.
(9) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost
    of errors, or somebody insists on getting some useful work done.
                                                   - Tom Gilb

Honest Officer, had I known my health stood
in jeopardy I would never had lit one.
     - maxim of the Hell's Angels

He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
     - South African saying

Use it up ... Wear it out.
Make it do ... Or do without.
     - US World War II propaganda

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
     - Wavy Gravy

It is very uncomfortable to be in a bathtub with an elephant.
      The First Law on International Aquatics

Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of
important operations one can do without thinking about them.

Infinity is one lawyer waiting for another.
     - Goetz'S Law

Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.

"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards
upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
    - H. L. Mencken -

Warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by the payment of the invoice.
     - Fraser's Rule

A man with one watch knows what time it is;
a man with two watches is never sure.
     - The Timex Law

Following the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked.
     - Nixon's Deduction

Trust everybody; but always cut the cards.
     - Piana's Principle

The Swartzberg Test:
The validity of a science is its ability to predict.

Whatever their faults, the Communists never created canned laughter.
      T. Smith's Observation

A small carafe of wine is illogical, immoral, and inadequate.
      Lisa's Deduction

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility
-there are so few of us left.
      Samet's Postulation

The remaining distance to your chosen campsite
remains constant as twilight approaches.
      Glaza's Law of Backpacking

Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal in the world.
      Alonzo's Axiom

Life is not one thing after another....
it's the same damn thing over and over!

The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars.

"Why stand when you can sit?
  Why sit when you can recline?
   Why walk when you can drive?
    Why drive when you can ride?"
         -- From the "Couch Potatos' Handbook", 1985 Edition

There is no remedy for sex but more sex.

Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch
it to be sure.

Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches
you're going to get or how long it will last.

What is the greatest Joy? The Joy of Duty!
      Red Lectroids, Planet 10

What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.

Heroes are not made...they're cornered.
      Promo for the film "Bullies"

Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.

These things are good in little measure and evil in large:
Yeast, Salt and Hesitation.
      The Talmud

"Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals."
    - "Oh, Lucky Man" -

Ode to Turbulent Flow:
 Big whirls have little whirls
 Which feed on their velocity,
 And little whirls have lesser whirls
 And so on, to viscosity.

A fool and his money are invited places.
      Anonymous

In the beginning, there were hot lumps.
Cold and lonely, they whirled noiselessly through the black holes of space.
    - Firesign Theater

All things come to him whose name is on a mailing list.
      Junk Mail Junkie

When a girl admits she's had a checkered career, it's your move...

How happy is the moron,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My God, perhaps I am!

Life is complex.  It consists of real and imaginary parts.

Conscience is a small inner voice that doesn't speak your language.
      Anonymous

Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is much farther away.

April's the month when the green returns to the lawn, the lilac, and the IRS.
     -Changing Times-

As far as we know, our computer has had no undetected errors.

Only the centipede recognizes the 5,000 footsteps of his grandfather.
      Banacek

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

You are young at any age if you are planning for tomorrow.
      Anonymous

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Help fight continental drift.

When the wolf is chasing the sleigh, throw him a
raisin cookie but don't stop to bake him a cake.
      Banacek

In jealousy there is self-love, not love.

It is impossible to thoroughly enjoy idleness
unless one has plenty of work to do.

Nice guys get sick.

Someone you reject today will reject you tomorrow.

Help stamp out Osmosis!
      Anonymous

To iterate is human, to recurse is divine.

If there were no such thing as gravity, the earth would fly off into space.

Insanity is hereditary,
You get it from your children.

A rolling stone gathers momentum.

Ancient Chinese Curse:
May you live in interesting times.

When a woman sits at a spinning wheel these days,
she's probably in Atlantic City.
     -Los Angeles Times-

Ancient Chinese Curse:
May all your wishes be granted.

Organization is the enemy of improvisation.

Familiarity breeds.

C'est la vie.

!lanimret siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox.

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Bye's First Law of Model Railroading:
Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of
faults encountered is proportional to the number of viewers.

Wolfgang's Third Law:  It can't work.

If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the sounds of a restaurant.
    - Snoopy -

There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

Any simple problem can be made insoluble if
enough meetings are held to discuss it.
      Anonymous

When in darkness or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

The Fourth Law of Computing: On a slow day, you can wait forever.

Sweer's Impossibility Theorem:
Nothing can be both completely general and
internally consistent at the same time.

Law of Communications:
The result of improved and enlarged communications
is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.

Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the soul of genius.

You can't plant me in your penthouse,
I'm going back to my plow.

A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl
doesn't lose her confidence.

A king's castle is his home.

A lie in time saves nine.

Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.

Do not clog intellect's sluices with knowledge of questionable uses.

Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.

From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.

God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends.

I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too!
     - The Wicked Witch of the West -

Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.

I don't remember ever having had the itch, and yet scratching
is one of nature's sweet pleasures, and so handy.

He's crazy!
Yeah, but he has all the machine guns.
     - Miami Vice -

"You speak treason!"
"Fluently."
     - Dr. Who -

Think twice before speaking. But don't say "think think click click".

In case of fire, yell FIRE!
     - The Management -

To criticize the incompetent is easy;
it is more difficult to criticize the competent.

WARRANTY
You've got to be kidding.
Nobody makes any kind of warranty.
If you decide to use the Opus system,
you do so entirely at your own risk.
     - From the Opus CBCS Manual

We prefer to speak evil of ourselves than not speak of ourselves at all.

Now we have the Smorgasbord luncheon for you working people
with no time. The price is right.
                Daily Smorgasbord Special
     - From the menu of the Chinese Food Garden, Miami, FL

What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that
they think themselves cleverer than we are.

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.

Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement
unless it was to avoid responsibility?

Good morning, Mister Phelps.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to
 SECURITY VIOLATION
 NO CARRIER

You have been selected for a secret mission.

Good decisions come from experience.
Experience comes from making bad ones.

Perfect practice makes perfect.
    - Vince Lomardi

They can always hurt you more.

Profanity is the language most programmers know best.

Epitaph:
Here lies the body of Mary Ann Lowder.
She burst while drinking a Seidlitz powder.
Called from this world to her heavenly rest,
She drank it and she effervesced.

Epitaph:
To the memory of Abraham Beauleiu,
Accidentally shot April 1844:
As a mark of affection from his brother.

Epitaph:
Underneath this stone
 lies poor John Round.
Lost at see
 and never found.

Epitaph:
Here lies an honest lawyer.
That is strange.

Epitaph:
Here lies Pat MacHree.
That's very true.
Who was he? What was he?
What's that to you?

Epitaph:
Jonathan Grober
 Died dead sober.
    =  =
Lord thy wonders never cease.

Epitaph:
Blown upward,
 out of sight,
He sought the leak
 by candlelight.

Epitaph:
The wedding day appointed was
 and wedding clothes provided.
But ere the day did come, alas,
 he sickened and he die did.

Epitaph:
Here lies my wife in earthy mould
 who when she lived did naught but scold.
Good friends go softly in your walking
 lest she should wake and rise up talking.

Epitaph:
Seven wives I've buried
 with as many a fervent prayer.
If we all should meet in heaven
 won't there be trouble there?

Epitaph (on an infant):
Since I have been so
 quickly done for,
I wonder what I
 was begun for.

Epitaph:
To all my friends I bid adieu.
A more sudden death you never knew.
As I was leading the mare to drink,
She kicked and killed me quicker'n a wink.

Epitaph:
Death's advantage over life I spy.
Here one husband with two wives may lie.

Epitaph:
Here lies John Racket
 in his wooden jacket.
Kept neither horses nor mules
 Lived a hog; died a dog.
Left all his money to fools.

Epitaph:
Ebenezer Prichard here lies low
Having forsook life.
Poisoned by his wife
and Dr. Eli Hornblow.

Epitaph:
She was not smart; she was not fair.
But hearts with grief for here are swellin'.
All empty stands her little chair
She died of eatin' watermelon.

Epitaph:
He called
Bill Smith
 A liar.

Epitaph:
Here lies Hermina Kuntz,
To virtue quite unknown.
Jesus, rejoice!
At last, she sleeps alone.

Epitaph:
Here lies the body of our dear Anna
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn't the fruit that dealt the blow
But the skin of the thing that laid her low.

Epitaph:
Beneath this stone our baby lies.
He neither cries nor hollers.
He lived on earth just twenty days.
And cost us forty dollars.

Epitaph:
At threescore winter's end I died,
A cheerless being sole and sad.
The nuptial knot I never tied
And wish my father never had.

Epitaph:
My wife is dead and here she lies.
Nobody laughs and nobody cries.
Where she is gone to and how she fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares.

Epitaph:
Here lies the body of Arnaksaw Jim.
We made the mistake,
 but the joke's on him.

Epitaph:
This empty urn is sacred to the memory of John Revere
 who died abroad in Finistere.
If he had lived he would have been buried here.

Epitaph for Alexander the Great:
This mound now is large enough for him for whom all the world was not.

Epitaph for a hypocondriac: I told you I was sick.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet,
Peanut butter is salty.

Happiness descended upon him.  He didn't even have time to step aside.

Mommy's baby, daddy's maybe!

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?
An inconceivable disturbance.
    - Anon

What is the sound of one hand clapping?
    - Zen Buddhism

A sadist is a person who is kind to a masochist.
    - Anon

Living means dying.
    - Engles

What happens to your fist when you open your hand?
    - Zen Buddhism

The more you know, the less you think you know.
    - Anon

If the rich could hire other people to die for them,
the poor could make a wonderful living.
    - Yiddish proverb

If I am because you are you, and if you are you
because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you.
    - Hassidic rabbi

The trick is to die young as old as possible.

There are things which we cannot know,
but it is impossible to know these things.

Writing a program is nothing but debugging a blank page.
    - Anonymous but frustrated Stanford programmer

Superstition sees the Finger of God even in trivialities.

Prophets have a way of dying by violence.
    - Bene Gesserit saying

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the
terrors of the future.            - from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib"
                                    by the Princess Irulan

And now my comrades are all gone;
  Naught remains to toast.
 They have left me here in my misery,
  like some poor wandering ghost.
    - Anon

Do not count a human dead until you've seen his body.
And even then you can make a mistake.
    - Bene Gesserit saying

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that
makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
    - from "The Sayings of Maud'Dib"
      by the Princess Irulan

Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises - no
matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the
baliset. It's not for fighting.
    - Gurney Halleck in Dune

A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people.
He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people
revert to a mob.
    - Stilgar in Dune

Advice is a dangerous commodity.

To know the future absolutely is to be trapped into that future absolutely.
    - Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"

Some actions have an end but no beginning; some begin but do not end.
It all depends upon where the observer is standing.
    - Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"

To suspect you own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn
irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.
    - Bene Gesserit saying

I grok Spock.

A logician trying to explain logic to a programmer is like a cat trying to
explain to a fish what it's like to be wet.
    - Anon

Quote for the day:
"         "
    - Marcel Marceau


A banker will lend you money only if you can prove you don't need it.
    - Anon


If you turn on the light quickly enough you can see what the dark looks like.
    - Anon

The time has come to wonder who could be the owner of
that cold, clammy hand that's exploring the end of the bed.
    - Curved Air

Possession of second sight has a tendency to make one a dangerous fatalist.
    - Frank Herbert, "Dune Messiah"

Some men are discovered; others are found out.

He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.

Mind your own business Mr. Spock. I'm sick of your half-breed interference,
do you hear?
     - James T. Kirk

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.

Warp Factor Four, Mister Sulu.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires
a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Only someone with nothing to be sorry for
smiles back at the rear of an elephant.

Man invented Alcohol.
God invented Grass.
Who do you trust?

A Hebrew schoolteacher asked one of his students if he said prayers before
meals. The proud little boy answered, "Oh, not me. I don't have to - my mom's
a good cook."

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Seen under an ubiquitous "Kilroy was here":
    "Heisenburg might have been here"!
       (if he was, he didn't know it)

I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline.
I object to power without constructive purpose.
      - Spock to the Squire of Gothos

Never laugh at a live dragon.
    - Bilbo Baggins

What would you do if you found a dwarf on your doormat?
    - Bilbo Baggins

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it
were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
    - Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

Only the fantastic has a chance of being real in the cosmos.
    - Hawkwind

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
    - Hawkwind

We will be geared toward the average rather than the exceptional.
    - Jethro Tull

God is an overwhelming responsibility.
    - Jethro Tull

Paranoia is having to keep your TV set on all the time because the people in
the box will talk about you if you don't force them to stick to their scripts.
    - Adapted by R. Geis from G. Farber

...the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil out of
Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge.
    - Letter in New Libertarian Notes #19

You don't come back from Dead Man's Curve.
    - Jan and Dean

Confusion will be my epitaph,
 As I walk a cracked and broken path,
 If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,
 But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
      King Crimson

When the music's over, turn out the lights.
    - Jim Morrison

Don't eat the yellow snow.
    - Frank Zappa

And oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
    - Lennon and McCartney

You don't leave your fly open in a pressure suit.
    - Larry Niven

I wouldn't worry about them old dreams none, they're only in your head.
    - Bob Dylan

Trussreppers will be persecuted.
    - Firesign Theater

Reality is a crutch.
    - Dick Jensen's toilet wall

You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.

Love is not enough, but is sure helps.

Childhood is a nightmare.

Progress is an illusion.

Nothing lasts.

There's no point in burying the hatchet if
you're going to put a marker on the site.
    - Anon.

If you don't want to grow old - die young.
    - Anon.

To think is to make one's self very uncomfortable.

A wise man knows everything
A shrewd one, everybody.
    - Chinese Fortune Cookie

I don't care what anybody says, it's STILL a primitive planet!
      Christopher Baker (Doctor Who)

If you can keep your head while all about you others
are losing theirs...perhaps you're the executioner.
    - R. Geis

History has the relation to truth that theology
has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of.
    - Lazarus Long

Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth
-- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.
    - Lazarus Long

Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or at
least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.
    - Lazarus Long

"Rights" is a fictional abstraction. No one has "Rights", neither
machines nor flesh-and-blood. Persons...have opportunities, not
rights, which they use or do not use.
    - Lazarus Long

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you
what can't be done, and why. Then do it.
    - Lazarus Long

Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's
beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad  nauseum, keep her from drowning
them at birth.
   - Lazarus Long

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
    - Lazarus Long

It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
    - Lazarus Long

A motion to adjourn is always in order.
    - Lazarus Long

It is better to copulate than never.
    - Lazarus Long

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
    - Lazarus Long

There is only one way to console a widow.
But remember the risk.
    - Lazarus Long

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
    - Lazarus Long

It took more than one man to change her name to Shanghai Lilly.
    - Michael Moorcock

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
    - Lennon and McCartney

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime,
you just might find, you get what you need.
    - Mick Jagger

You can be in my dreams, if I can be in yours.
    - Bob Dylan

All wrong numbers are the same person.
    - Larry Niven

"Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
      Tom Lehrer

"No matter where you go...There you are."
      Buckaroo Banzai

"Reality is just a blip at the edge of the screen."
      - Christopher Baker (Doctor Who)

"There was something fishy about the butler.
 I think he was a Pisces, probably working for scale."
      Nick Danger, Third Eye

"The times, they are a' changing."
      Gordon Lightfoot

"It's a great life, if you don't weaken!"
      Paul Cornish

"I'm melting!"
      Wicked Witch of the West

"You would think that a technology that can send a man to the moon and bring him
back again could invent a coiled telephone handset cord that doesn't tangle!"
      Anon

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
     -Found on an old scrap of paper after the Blast

I have seen the future and it sucks!
       -Mike Kelly (sysop)

...but the world wouldn't be safe without the Bomb!
                                        Mr. Cunningham, "Happy Days"

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land
   under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck")
2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"

Hofstadter's Law:
 It always takes longer than you expect,
 even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Main's Law:
 For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."

Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
 It's on the other side.

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.

Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.

Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.

The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.

Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
 The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
 to.....to........uh..............

Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots

It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly
ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle?

If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit
you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The
difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The
crucial point is if you can tell which is which.

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

A penny saved is ridiculous.

The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

"You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."

If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.

It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark

Bank error in your favor.  Collect $200.

Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.

As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.

Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.

For a good time, call [phone]

A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).

To be is to do.
 -- I. Kant
To do is to be.
 -- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
 -- F. Flinstone

God is Dead
 -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
 -- God
Nietzsche is God
 -- Dead

Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.

Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.

Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.

Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, and you will pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.

Necessity is a mother.

Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH

You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.

May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.

May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts

May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.

In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
 And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
 And men were really obnoxious...

Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question.  "Yes" is the answer.

$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.

If God had intended Men to smoke, He would have put chimneys in their heads.

If God had intended Man to smoke, He would have set him on fire.

If God had intended Man to walk, He would have given him feet.

If God had intended Man to watch TV, He would have given him rabbit ears.

How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
    With gently smiling jaws!

You're at the end of the road again.

The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
    "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
    Pray what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
    "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
    Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
    That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
    What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
    Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

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.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(thi)!

A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
 The system, you see,
 Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.

This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "randchar".  This program generates random characters,
and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with something profound. It
will, however, take it no time at all to be more profound than THIS program
has ever been.

This fortune intentionally not included.

flibber-ti-gibbet
One who is inclined to look up words like flibbertigibbet
        -B.C.-

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!

 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- 'Be
what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- '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.'"

 "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't--till I tell you.
I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
 "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.
 "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means
just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
 "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many
different things."
 "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."

In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency.
  -- the Peter Principle

Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.

Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation
may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School
of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what DOES exist.
Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no
need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking
the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might
say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way...

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.

I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.

When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.

Look out!  Behind you!

Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!

Desk: A wastbasket with drawers.

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing

If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go
wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
 "Murphy was an optimist."

Boling's postulate:
 If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.

Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.

Scott's second Law:
 When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been
 wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
 After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the
 original quantity back into the equation.

Finagle's first Law:
 If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's second Law:
 No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be  someone eager to
 (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his
 own pet theory.

Finagle's third Law:
 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
 beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
 1.  Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
 2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
     don't want to hear, will see it immediately.

Finagle's fourth Law:
 Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.

Science is convinced there's no intelligent
life in our solor system.
  S. F. Chronicle

Simon's Law:
 Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
 Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
 meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
 Theorem.  To wit:
 1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
 2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
     even.
 3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
     game.

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
 Negative expectations yield negative results.
 Positive expectations yield negative results.

Sturgeon's Law:
 90% of everything is crud.

Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of
 errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.

Brook's Law:
 Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
 Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests
 their lack of progress.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
 You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

Jenning's Corollary:
 The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
 directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Johnson's First Law:
 When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
 most inconvenient possible time.

Watson's Law:
 The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
 number and significance of any persons watching it.

Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
 Push something hard enough and it will fall over.

Cahn's Axiom:
 When all else fails, read the instructions.

Jenkinson's Law:
 It won't work.

Maier's Law:
 If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
 disposed of.
Corollaries:
 1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
 2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
     50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
     obtain a correspondence with the theory.

Williams and Holland's Law:
 If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Harvard Law:
 Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature,
 volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well
 pleases.

Brooke's Law:
 Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers
 something which either abolishes the system or  expands it beyond recognition.

Meskimen's Law:
 There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

Johnson's Corollary:
 Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.

Peter's Law of Substitution:
 Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.

Parkinson's Fourth Law:
 The number of people in any working group tends to increase
 regardless of the amount of work to be done.

Parkinson's Fifth Law:
 If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy,
 public or private, will find it.

H. L. Mencken's Law:
 Those who can -- do.
 Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
 Those who cannot teach -- administrate.

Rule of Feline Frustration:
 When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and
 adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.

After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.

This universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on
government contract.

In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.

Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.

First Law of Bicycling:
 No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.

Boob's Law:
 You always find something in the last place you look.

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.

Miksch's Law:
 If a string has one end, then it has another end.

Law of Communications:
 The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between
 different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.

Harris's Lament:
 All the good ones are taken.

Putt's Law:
 Technology is dominated by two types of people:
     Those who understand what they do not manage.
     Those who manage what they do not understand.

First Law of Procrastination:
 Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its
 termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).

Fifth Law of Procrastination:
 Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
 there is nothing important to do.

Swipple's Rule of Order:
 He who shouts the loudest has the floor.

Wiker's Law:
 Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.

Gray's Law of Programming:
 '_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
 time as '_n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
 '_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as '_n' trivial tasks.

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
 The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and
 the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

Weinberg's First Law:
 Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

Malek's Law:
 Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Weinberg's Principle:
 An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
 sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

First Law of Socio-Genetics:
 Celibacy is not hereditary.

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.

Pardo's First Postulate:
 Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
 Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.

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.

The Kennedy Constant:
 Don't get mad -- get even.

Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
 It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
 A .44 magnum beats four aces.

Hartley's First Law:
 You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
 on his back, you've got something.

I'm a hacker and I'm OK
I work all night and I sleep all day.
I'll have a system of my own someday,
that'll run my code in a hacked up way.
      (with no apologies whatever to Monty Python)

Digital circuits are made from analog parts.

Pretend to spank me - I'm a pseudo-masochist!

Is a computer language with goto's totally Wirth-less?

He who hesitates is last.

Nietzsche is pietzsche, Goethe is murder.

A man's house is his hassle.

Chaste makes waste.

An engineer is someone who does list processing in Fortran.

A chicken is an egg's way of producing more epgs.

Neutrinos have bad breadth.

Programmers get overlaid.

Procedures for Electronic Instrument Repair:
  Step 3
   In a forceful manner, recite Ohm's Law to the instrument.
   (Caution: BEFORE TAKING THIS STEP, REFER TO A HANDBOOK TO BE SURE OF YOUR
   KNOWLEDGE OF OHM'S LAW.)  This will prove to the instrument that you do
   know something.  This is a drastic step and should only be taken if the
   first two steps fail.  If this step fails, proceed to step 4.

Procedures for Electronic Instrument Repair:
  Step 4
   Jar the instrument slightly.  This may take anything from a three to six
   foot drop, preferably on a concrete floor.  However, you must be careful
   with this step because, while jarring in the approved method of repair,
   you must not mar the floor.  Again, this is a very drastic step.  If it
   should fail, proceed to step 5.

Procedures for Electronic Instrument Repair:
  Step 5
   Brandish a large screwdriver in a menacing manner.  This will frighten
   the instrument and demonstrates the deadly "SHORT CIRCUIT" technique.
   If this step fails, proceed to step 6.

Procedures for Electronic Instrument Repair:
  Step 6
   Add a tube...even if the instrument is solid state.  This will prove to
   the instrument that you are familiar with the design of the instrument.
   Also, this will increase your advantage and confuse the instrument.
   If this step fails, proceed to the most drastic and dangerous step of
   all, step 7.  It is very seldom used and is the last resort if all else
   fails.

Procedures for Electronic Instrument Repair:
  Step 7
   Think...!? Is the most dangerous step of all!  It is very seldom used and
   is the last resort if all else fails.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned
to the project.

God did not create the world in seven days.
He partied for six and then pulled an all-nighter.

To make tax forms true they should read "Income Owed Us" and Incommode You".

this cookie from:
        Doctor Dobbs' Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia
                       "Running Light Without Overbyte"

Due to lack of interest, tomorrow will be canceled.

Every child born in America can hope to grow up to enjoy tax loopholes.

Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.

By the time a person gets to greener pastures, he can't climb the fence.

<EOF>