This Page is a Work in Progress. Let me know if you find any blatant errors.
All of these quotes are collected from the fortune program and have been somewhat organized by me.
H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach -- administrate. ============================================================================= Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. ============================================================================= Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. ============================================================================= Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. ============================================================================= Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can ever hope to acquire it. =============================================================================
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long. "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine." "But the collar is up around my ears!" "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a little more ... that's it." "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation. "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly." So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by. "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!" "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him. "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an hour seems like a minute." The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?" -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Chicken Soup, n.: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow ... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= "God gives burdens; also shoulders" Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why would he lie about a thing like that? -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates: "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous. "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are ____very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is ____very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them ..." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the the difference between life and death. You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a nice half-done." Worth the trouble, wasn't it? -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison. They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death. The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray. "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he spits in the sergeants face. "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________somebody has to buy retail." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= Shamus, n.: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order. A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog functionaries, and there's a joke about that: A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!" -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" ============================================================================= There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is this? Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___you can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Common Jewish Expressions" =============================================================================
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Absentee, n.: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Abstainer, n.: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Adore, v.: To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Alliance, n.: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Alone, adj.: In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Brain, n.: The apparatus with which we think that we think. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Cabbage, n.: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Coward, n.: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Cynic, n.: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Dawn, n.: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Dentist, n.: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Did you know that clones never use mirrors? -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Distress, n.: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Egotist, n.: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Garter, n.: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Hand, n.: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Happiness, n.: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Hatred, n.: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Heaven, n.: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Hippogriff, n.: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Impartial, adj.: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= 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, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Incumbent, n.: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Ink, n.: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= 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, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Kleptomaniac, n.: A rich thief. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Labor, n.: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Liar, n.: A lawyer with a roving commission. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Man, n.: 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Misfortune, n.: The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Miss, n.: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Molecule, n.: 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 ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Monday, n.: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Mythology, n.: 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Noncombatant, n.: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce ============================================================================= November, n.: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Once, adv.: Enough. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Once Law was sitting on the bench And Mercy knelt a-weeping. "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench! Nor come before me creeping. Upon you knees if you appear, 'Tis plain you have no standing here." Then Justice came. His Honor cried: "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!" "Amica curiae," she replied -- "Friend of the court, so please you." "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door -- I never saw your face before!" -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Peace, n.: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Pig, n.: 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Reporter, n.: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= 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. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Truthful, adj.: Dumb and illiterate. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Wit, n.: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery ... by leaving it out. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ============================================================================= Year, n.: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" =============================================================================
"... all the modern inconveniences ..." -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar." -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. ============================================================================= A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain ============================================================================= Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "He is now rising from affluence to poverty." -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up." -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" ============================================================================= I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "When in doubt, tell the truth." -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth. -- Mark Twain "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" ============================================================================= Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. -- Mark Twain ============================================================================= "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved" -- Mark Twain =============================================================================
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie
a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and
impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over
again. People think you are stupid.
=============================================================================
PISCES (Feb 19 - Mar 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by
the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates, and
people resent you for flaunting your power. You lack confidence and
are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to small
animals.
=============================================================================
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not very
nice.
=============================================================================
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and
work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed.
You are a Communist.
=============================================================================
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you
are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too
little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for committing
incest.
=============================================================================
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
a sick sense of humor.
=============================================================================
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers.
=============================================================================
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
that old underwear you own.
=============================================================================
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If
you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for employment
and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are prostitutes.
All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
=============================================================================
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the
pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio
people are murdered.
=============================================================================
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal.
=============================================================================
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do much of
anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
=============================================================================
Actor: So what do you do for a living? Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving dishes for Chinese restaurants. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" ============================================================================= As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" ============================================================================= It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes ... -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" =============================================================================W What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists? -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" ============================================================================= When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me. -- Woody Allen ============================================================================= Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" =============================================================================
Famous last words: ============================================================================= Famous last words: 1) "Don't worry, I can handle it." 2) "You and what army?" 3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop." ============================================================================= Famous last words: 1. Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix. 2. Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there. 3. What happens if you touch these two wires tog-- 4. We won't need reservations. 5. It's always sunny there this time of the year. 6. Don't worry, it's not loaded. 7. They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager. =============================================================================
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. -- Abraham Lincoln ============================================================================= Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln ============================================================================= Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. -- A. Lincoln =============================================================================
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow" ============================================================================= The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". -- H. Allen Smith =============================================================================
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw ============================================================================= I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. -- George Bernard Shaw ============================================================================= The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw ============================================================================= There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it -- G. B. Shaw ============================================================================= 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 =============================================================================
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. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" ============================================================================= It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" ============================================================================= Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" =============================================================================
... if forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Accidents cause History. If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its name to "America". -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= British Israelites: The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Economics, n.: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K. Galbraith ... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Encyclopedia Salesmen: Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police and tell them your house is being burgled. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Gold, n.: A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold hasn't done anything to them. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing Half a pound of tuppenny rice Half a pound of treacle That's the way the chimney smokes Pope Goestheveezl The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= Some points to remember [about animals]: 1. Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses; 2. Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes; 3. Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog: The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress' it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the apparatus for a spectator sport. The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for castrating pigs during Sunday service. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't take it too seriously. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" ============================================================================= When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies, the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" =============================================================================
Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the PROGRAMMER was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed. -- Ray Simard ============================================================================= C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't. -- Ray Simard ============================================================================= Goto, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers to complain about unstructured programmers. -- Ray Simard ============================================================================= Manual, n.: A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information you need is in the others. -- Ray Simard =============================================================================
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou. Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo! -- Walt Kelly ============================================================================= HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains. -- Walt Kelly ============================================================================= "If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means." -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party" ============================================================================= Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ... -- Walt Kelly ============================================================================= "Now is the time for all good men to come to." -- Walt Kelly ============================================================================= We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo" ============================================================================= We have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Walt Kelly =============================================================================
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
quickly.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
... This striving for excellence extends into people's
personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the
best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability.
Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking
soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a
reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their
table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is
not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous
crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their
beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant
wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of
Liza Minnelli.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
=============================================================================
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
=============================================================================
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
=============================================================================
All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around
you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making
average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents,
insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll
realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins
in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real
successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John,
Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They
all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on?
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
=============================================================================
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
=============================================================================
Besides the device, the box should contain:
* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.
IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
why."
WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
=============================================================================
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
=============================================================================
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDED AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH HE KNOBS,
RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
=============================================================================
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
=============================================================================
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
=============================================================================
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
=============================================================================
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
=============================================================================
Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
Lassie filed the applications for.
-- Dave Barry
=============================================================================
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars:
For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return
around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours
poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you
can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it
to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his
money.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
=============================================================================
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
=============================================================================
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
choice.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
no need to improve ...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
=============================================================================
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
lots.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
=============================================================================
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
=============================================================================
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
developed cancer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
=============================================================================
"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
=============================================================================
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
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Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
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We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
in his bowl full of jelly.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
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Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
children open their old-fashioned presents.
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
and I get this cretin TOP?"
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
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Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.
Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
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You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
safety glasses.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
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You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
names. Here's the complete text:
"1. How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
"2. How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
"3. Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
form.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
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You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
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You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
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A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And he answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ============================================================================= "Arguments with furniture are rarely productive." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ============================================================================= "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ============================================================================= I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ============================================================================= "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ============================================================================= Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations. He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open market. If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself. Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree. Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg. Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" =============================================================================
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. -- Wernher von Braun ============================================================================= Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun ============================================================================= Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun =============================================================================
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= 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(phi)! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= 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. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= 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. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" ============================================================================= When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" =============================================================================
"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" ============================================================================= Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" ============================================================================= 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! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" ============================================================================= "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." -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" ============================================================================= "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.'" -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" ============================================================================= I sent a letter to the fish, I told them, "This is what I wish." The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer back to me. The little fishes' answer was "We cannot do it, sir, because ..." I sent a letter back to say It would be better to obey. But someone came to me and said "The little fishes are in bed." I said to him, and I said it plain "Then you must wake them up again." I said it very loud and clear, I went and shouted in his ear. But he was very stiff and proud, He said "You needn't shout so loud." And he was very proud and stiff, He said "I'll go and wake them if ..." I took a kettle from the shelf, I went to wake them up myself. But when I found the door was locked I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked, And when I found the door was shut, I tried to turn the handle, But ... "Is that all?" asked Alice. "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye." -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" ============================================================================= Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^omerade horgrave. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" ============================================================================= "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now." "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly. "Too proud?" the other enquired. Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean," she said, "that one can't help growing older." "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven." -- Lewis Carroll ============================================================================= Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy Because he knows it teases. Wow! wow! wow! I speak severely to my boy, And beat him when he sneezes: For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases! Wow! wow! wow! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" ============================================================================= The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright -- And this was very odd, because it was The middle of the night. -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" ============================================================================= "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat -- Lewis Carrol ============================================================================= "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." -- Lewis Carrol ============================================================================= "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." -- Lewis Carrol ============================================================================= "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?" -- Lewis Carrol ============================================================================= "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!" -- Lewis Carrol =============================================================================
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad. -- W. C. Fields ============================================================================= Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she pretty? W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia. Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative. W. C.: It's almost impossible. -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles" ============================================================================= "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" -- W. C. Fields ============================================================================= Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -- W. C. Fields ============================================================================= Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. -- W. C. Fields ============================================================================= Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee" ============================================================================= The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -- W. C. Fields =============================================================================
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. ============================================================================= [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves to see him work. -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason. -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce" -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= "MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts." -- Winston Churchill ============================================================================= "When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite." -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war =============================================================================
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register. ============================================================================= Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job? A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off. ============================================================================= Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb? A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks". =============================================================================
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare ============================================================================= College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity. -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================================= Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================================= Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================================= For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================================= Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================================= Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -- H. L. Mencken =============================================================================
Aquadextrous, adj.: Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Cinemuck, n.: The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which covers the floors of movie theaters. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Furbling, v.: Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank even when you are the only person in line. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= 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). -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= 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. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr): The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Lactomangulation, n.: Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Magnocartic, adj.: Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" ============================================================================= Mustgo, n.: Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so long it has become a science project. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" ============================================================================= Slurm, n.: The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when it sits in the dish too long. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" =============================================================================E Snacktrek, n.: The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" ============================================================================= Spirtle, n.: The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" ============================================================================= Yinkel, n.: A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one will notice. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" =============================================================================
Alas, I am dying beyond my means. -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed ============================================================================= As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= He hadn't a single redeeming vice. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= "There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope." -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. -- Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. --Oscar Wilde ============================================================================= "Why was I born with such contemporaries?" -- Oscar Wilde =============================================================================
Dear Miss Manners: My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct? Gentle Reader: For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is. ============================================================================= Dear Miss Manners: Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face. Gentle Reader: Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face ... ============================================================================= The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public. It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street ... ============================================================================= There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted. -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour =============================================================================
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)" -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"] ============================================================================= Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. ============================================================================= I hate quotations. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson ============================================================================= If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson ============================================================================= Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? -- Ralph Emerson ============================================================================= The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. -- Emerson =============================================================================
It is the business of little minds to shrink. -- Carl Sandburg =============================================================================
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. -- John Kenneth Galbraith ============================================================================= If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -- John Kenneth Galbraith ============================================================================= Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. -- John Kenneth Galbraith =============================================================================
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny-- Did you ever try buying then without money? -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= Happiness is having a scratch for every itch. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Gives us ham and pork and Bacon. Let others think his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig. -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher, Were each of them once a kiddie. A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature. Do I want one? God Forbiddie! -- Ogden Nash ============================================================================= The trouble with a kitten is that When it grows up, it's always a cat -- Ogden Nash. ============================================================================= The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex. I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile. -- Ogden Nash =============================================================================
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein ============================================================================= The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert Heinlein ============================================================================= When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. -- Robert Heinlein ============================================================================= $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" ============================================================================= Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" ============================================================================= Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" ============================================================================= Never try to outstubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" ============================================================================= The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" ============================================================================= Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" =============================================================================
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" ============================================================================= Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ============================================================================= Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does. As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians. The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes. This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease. -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" =============================================================================
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice. "No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in Elven-lore: "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves, Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves. Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop, This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop. The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring. The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing. If broken or busted, it cannot be remade. If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)." -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" ============================================================================= It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle, nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's. Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting icepacks. -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" ============================================================================= The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system. -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" ============================================================================= "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips." "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito. "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made good copy." -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" =============================================================================
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= DETERIORATA Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself, And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss -- and when. Remember that two wrongs never make a right, But that three do. Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD". Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment, And despite the changing fortunes of time, There is always a big future in computer maintenance. You are a fluke of the universe ... You have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe Is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon ============================================================================= Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Cleveland. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" ============================================================================= Whether you can hear it or not The Universe is laughing behind your back -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" =============================================================================
"Grub first, then ethics." -- Bertolt Brecht ============================================================================= "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?" -- Bertold Brecht ============================================================================= "Why be a man when you can be a success?" -- Bertold Brecht =============================================================================