A few more fortunes
%%
'I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
      -- G. K. Chesterton
%%
I brake for chezlogs!
%%
I call them as I see them.  If I can't see them, I make them up.
      -- Biff Barf
%%
I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
relentless day.
      -- Betty MacDonald
%%
I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
%%
"I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
true."
      -- Harry Truman
%%
"I can resist anything but temptation."
%%
"I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling."
      -- Florence Henderson
%%
I can't understand it.  I can't even understand the people who can
understand it.
      -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
%%
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
      -- Fred Allen
%%
"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
      -- Lillian Hellman
%%
I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
      -- F. H. Wales (1936)
%%
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"
%%
" I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
standing still ..."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
I could dance till the cows come home.  On second thought, I'd rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
      -- Groucho Marx
%%
"I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed.  Except perhaps
the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ..."
      -- Peter Oakley
%%
"I didn't know it was impossible when I did it."
%%
I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions.  The
curtain was up.
%%
   I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
leads to violence.  What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
library, we could call each other up:

     You: Hello?  Bob?
     Bob: Yes?
     You: This is Ed.  Remember?  The person whose parking space you
          took last Thursday?  Outside of Sears?
     Bob: Oh yes!  Sure!  How are you, Ed?
     You: Fine, thanks.  Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
     "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..."  No, wait.
     I mean:  "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
     and ..."  No, wait.  (Sound of reference book thudding onto
     the floor.)  S-word.  Excuse me.  Look, Bob, I'm going to
     have to get back to you.
     Bob: Fine.
      -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%%
I do hate sums.  There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science.  There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
mind like mine to perceive.  For instance, if you add a sum from the
bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
different.
      -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
%%
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use."
      -- Galileo Galilei
%%
"I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
      -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%%
"I don't believe in astrology.  But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology."
      -- James R. F. Quirk
%%
I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial.  I don't like the idea of
a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
      -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
      -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I don't know anything about music.  In my line you don't have to."
      -- Elvis Presley
%%
   "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 don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
eat it, and I just hate it."
      -- Clarence Darrow
%%
"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
      -- Ronald Mabbitt
%%
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
      -- Victor Hugo
%%
"I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?"
%%
"I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes.  Just then, he vanished.
%%
"I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital.  On the other
hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."
%%
I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days.  Congress is
thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
broadcast signals to alien beings.  This would be a large mistake.
Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons.  You cannot cut off
their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
      -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
         COMING!"
%%
I doubt, therefore I might be.
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
      -- George Jean Nathan
%%
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
so I woke up from sheer boredom.
%%
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.

Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%%
"I found out why my car was humming.  It had forgotten the words."
%%
"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
      -- Gotama Buddha
%%
I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex.  It was the most *__________horrifying* 20
minutes of my life!
%%
'I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
      -- Mae West
%%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
      -- Pete Seeger
%%
"I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!"
      -- Mary Lou Bax
%%
"I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense."
%%
"I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
it's going to be up all night."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I hate quotations."
      -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
I have a simple philosophy:

   Fill what's empty.
   Empty what's full.
   Scratch where it itches.
      -- A. R. Longworth
%%
"I have a very firm grasp on reality!  I can reach out and strangle it
any time!"
%%
"I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'."
      -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%%
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
and they never believe me.
      -- Camillo Di Cavour
%%
I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
      -- Edgar Allan Poe
%%
"I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages.  You
sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working.  I
have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below.  Westbrook Pegler, a
guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you.  You can take that as more
of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry."
      -- President Harry S Truman
%%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on 
Some people's n'oeuvres.
      -- Warren Knox
%%
"I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
that I have never made one."
      -- James Gordon Bennett
%%
"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter."
      -- Blaise Pascal
%%
I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
____BODY!
      -- from "Cerebus" #82
%%
"I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer."
      -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
"I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best."
      -- Oscar Wilde
%%
"I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
      -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%%
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
      -- Poul Anderson
%%
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
%%
"I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
      -- Bill Hoest
%%
I know it all.  I just can't remember it all at once.
%%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
      -- Albert Einstein
%%
"I know the answer!  The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
The answer is twelve?  I think I'm in the wrong building."
      -- Charles Schulz
%%
"I like being single.  I'm always there when I need me."
      -- Art Leo
%%
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it.
      -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
"I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours."
%%
"I like your game but we have to change the rules."
%%
"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour!  This is what
entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
      -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
%%
"I love to eat them Smurfies
 Smurfies what I love to eat
 Bite they ugly heads off,
 Nibble on they bluish feet."
%%
"I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
don't let appearances fool you.  I'm approaching old age ... at the
speed of light."
      -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
      -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"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 must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%%
"I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away."
%%
"I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like."
%%
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
      -- G. B. Shaw
%%
"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
      -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
%%
"I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
substances being in widespread use.  Back then, there were no
restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
nerve disease."
      -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%%
I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
%%
"I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral
slob."
      -- William F. Buckley
%%
   "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 realize that the MX missile is none of our concern.  I realize that
the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
plumber.

But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
write about, such as nose-picking.
      -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
         Political Fallout"
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."
%%
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes.  I hope
they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
      -- Will Rogers
%%
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 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"
%%
"I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck."
      -- Graffito in Los Angeles
%%
"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
      -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
         Points in l'Amour"
%%
"I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards.  I got a full
house and four people died."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six.  Mother took me to
see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
      -- Shirley Temple
%%
I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
too much damage if it catches fire or explodes.  First you decide which
direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy.  After
much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
tub to face is up.
      -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%%
"I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
because I couldn't remember the proof."
      -- Baker, Pure Math 351a
%%
"I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it."
%%
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
in this country are fed up with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly
not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
      -- Monty Python
%%
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
%%
I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as a tree.
But as you see the trees have gone
They went this morning with the dawn.
A logging firm from out of town
Came and chopped the trees all down.
But I will trick those dirty skunks
And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
%%
"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is.  You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color.  We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
      -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
%%
I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
... HEY!  PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT!  I said I think
we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war.  This point was
driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
conversation ...
      -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%%
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%%
" ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
      -- Winston Churchill
%%
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
twenty minutes.  It's about Russia.
      -- Woody Allen
%%
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
body.  Then I realized who was telling me this."
      -- Emo Phillips
%%
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory.  You couldn't park anywhere
near the place.
      -- Steven Wright
%%
I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
animals.  I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
      -- Brendan Behan
%%
"I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
HAW"!!'"
      -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
%%
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
up.
      -- Will Rogers
%%
"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn.  By accident I
put the car key in the door lock.  The house started up.  So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times.  I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know."
      -- Mark Twain
%%
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
      -- Emile Henry Gauvreay
%%
"I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
house and four people died."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything
specific".
      -- Steven Wright
%%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
      -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
         Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%%
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?

He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint.  It was in
the shape of a house.  I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
included."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
statues that are in all the other museums."
      -- Steven Wright
%%
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!
%%
"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work."
      -- Gallagher
%%
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me."
      -- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
`Y.'"
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
blender."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
garage door."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
Julian to Gregorian."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
static cling."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
cottage cheese sculpture."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
transplant."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say
tuned."
%%
"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
need worrying about."
%%
"I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."
      -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
%%
I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
listen to it!
      -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
%%
I'll grant thee 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"
%%
"I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
man."
%%
I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
%%
"I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
sister."
%%
I'm changing my name to Chrysler
I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
I'll tell some power broker
   What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
I'm heading for that great receiving line.
When they hand a million grand out,
   I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yessir, I'll get mine!
      -- Tom Paxton
%%
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
die in."
      -- George McGovern
%%
I'm going to Boston to see my doctor.  He's a very sick man.
      -- Fred Allen
%%
I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
      -- Spider Robinson
%%
"I'm in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?"
      -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%%
i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
      -- e. e. cummings
%%
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary.  (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
%%
"I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get."
%%
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States.  The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
      -- Arthur Godfrey
%%
"I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
soon ..."
%%
"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
(your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
      -- English Professor, Providence College
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
      -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
%%
"I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's
lives"
%%
I've built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.

I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.

      -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
         "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
         by Gilbert & Sullivan)
%%
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
%%
I've found my niche.  If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
this little hole in the bottom ...
      -- John Croll
%%
I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
%%
I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
on the same day.
%%
"I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer."
%%
"I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer"
      -- Senator Claghorn
%%
I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting.  I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more.
      -- Shakespeare
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
   Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
   It was a total loss.
%%
Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
%%
Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
solitary confinement.
%%
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"
%%
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"
%%
If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
at about 30 miles/second.
      -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
      -- Roy Santoro
%%
"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
      -- Paul White
%%
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
forecast is a camel's behind.
      -- Edgar R. Fiedler
%%
If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
passes.  Someone in the group has to be the manager.
      -- T. Cheatham
%%
If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
it votes guilty.
      -- Joseph C. Goulden
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%%
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
dropped.  The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
must drop.  The law of gravity supercedes the law of golf.
      -- Donald A. Metz
%%
"If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
attitude.  If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
playing the game right.  If it plays the game right, it will win --
unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?"
      -- Sparky Anderson
%%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
      -- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
%%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
      -- William Baumol
%%
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
      -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%%
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
around a deal faster.
      -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
%%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%%
... 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"
%%
If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
to a can.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
      -- Yiddish saying
%%
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
      -- Marvin Kitman
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
      -- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
%%
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
      -- Eugene P. Gallagher
%%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
      -- Ted Turner
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
      -- Albert Einstein
%%
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
      -- Isaac Newton

In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
      -- Gerald Holton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
      -- Hal Abelson

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
      -- Brian K. Reid
%%
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"
%%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%%
"If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
forgot to send it.  But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
receive Net Mail ..."
       -- Leith (Casey) Leedom
%%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%%
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"
%%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.
%%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%%
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
      -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
%%
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
      -- A. Einstein.
%%
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"
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%%
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
%%
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
physical world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
      -- Vannevar Bush
%%
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
      -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
%%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
      -- Stanley Garn
%%
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
%%
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me!"
      -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.  If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.  If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
      -- Reverend Chichester
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
      -- Art Hoppe
%%
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
something out of you.
      -- Muhammad Ali
%%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%%
If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%%
If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
yesterday?
%%
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
      -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%%
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
      -- Laurence J. Peter
%%
"If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely"
%%
"If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage."
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
      -- Marguerite Emmons
%%
If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
      -- Ann Edwards-Duff
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
      -- J. Paul Getty
%%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%%
If you can read this, you're too close.
%%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%%
If you can't be good, be careful.  If you can't be careful, give me a
call.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
      -- Harry S Truman
%%
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
      -- Clarence Day
%%
If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
      -- Freeman Dyson
%%
If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
either of you for the rest of the day.
%%
"If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye."
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
      -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently"
%%
If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
boot yourself in the posterior.
      -- A. J. Liebling
%%
If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
%%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
      -- Graham Summer
%%
If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
people die past the age of a hundred.
      -- George Burns
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
      -- Maslow
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%%
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
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice.  If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.  But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up.  You're
the sucker.
%%
If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
%%
If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock. 
   Or some joker who is slicker,
   Will trick you of your liquor,
If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
%%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
      -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%%
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
      -- Arthur Kasspe
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
      -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
you to say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw
another party next year.

What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
been indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to
avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
having another one ...

If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure
that they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting
someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
%%
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
      -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
%%
"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
      -- A. L.
%%
If you want divine justice, die.
      -- Nick Seldon
%%
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
he gave it to.
      -- Dorthy Parker
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
"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"
%%
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
%%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%%
   If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle.  So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it.  The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
   And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I.  How
difficult can it be?"
   Very difficult.  In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself.  There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money.  This article can help you.
      -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
      -- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%%
"If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round
it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
universe?"
%%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
      -- Ronald Reagan
%%
Ignisecond, n.:
   The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
      -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
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"
%%
Iles's Law:
   There is always an easier way to do it.  When looking directly
at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
Neither will Iles.
%%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
      -- Jules de Gaultier
%%
"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining."
      -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
%%
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer.  It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?

"Is it PC compatible?"
%%
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
      -- Jack Paar
%%
Impossible, adj.:
   (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
(2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered.  Meaning (3) may
perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
      -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%%
In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled
waffles.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
   In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
junior, what are you up to?"
   "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
   "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
   "Well, follow me and I'll show you."  They both go into the
rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
expression on his face.
   Comes along a wolf.  "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
   "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
devour wolves."
   "Are you crazy?  Where is your academic honesty?"
   "Come with me and I'll show you."  As before, the rabbit comes
out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.

The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
%%
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
      -- Frank Mankiewicz
%%
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
      -- Mark Twain
%%
In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries.  Anthropologists call
this a form of primitive self-expression.  In America we call it golf.
%%
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow.  All
those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
as a human sperm, please raise your hands.  Thank you.
      -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
      -- Adlai Stevenson
%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
      -- The Peter Principle
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
"In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir."
      -- Stuart Keate
%%
In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
%%
In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%%
In case of injury notify your superior immediately.  He'll kiss it and
make it better.
%%
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
to get her attention.
%%
In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
in any motor vehicle.
%%
"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
      -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery
%%
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
neighbor.
%%
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
%%
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 English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
the sidewalks when a concert is on.
%%
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
%%
In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
pocket.
%%
In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
either flying or waiting to board a plane.
%%
In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
%%
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
%%
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"
%%
In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
%%
In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
view."
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
      -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
is over six feet in length.
%%
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
      -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."
%%
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
%%
In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
moving automobile.
%%
[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ...  You
could strike sparks anywhere.  There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...

And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that.  Our energy would simply `prevail'.  There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
      -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%%
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
hacking at the PDP-6.  "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.  "I am
training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."  "Why is the
net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.  "I do not want it to have any
preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes.  "Why do you
close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.  "So the room will be
empty."  At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
%%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
      -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%%
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"
%%
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.  Therefore ... in the
Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
... There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such
wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
fact.
      -- Mark Twain 
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
      -- Art Linkletter
%%
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
my advice.
      -- Winston Churchill
%%
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
%%
In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
%%
Incumbent, n.:
   Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat.  It is
not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
      -- Stephen Crane
%%
Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
%%
Individualists unite!
%%
Infancy, n.:
   The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
lies about us."  The world begins lying about us pretty soon
afterward.
      -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Information Center, n.:
   A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%%
Ingrate, n.:
   A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
      -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%%
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"
%%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
      -- Dan Fylstra
%%
Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.
%%
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"
%%
Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
%%
"Irrationality is the square root of all evil"
      -- Douglas Hofstadter
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
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
%%
Is your job running?  You'd better go catch it!
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:

   The Course of Progress:
      Most things get steadily worse.

   The Path of Progress:
      A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates.  One slow day, he found that he
had time to chat with the new entrants.  To the first one he asked,
"What's your IQ?"  The new arrival replied, "190".  They discussed
Einstein's theory of relativity for hours.  When the second new arrival
came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ.  The answer
this time came "120".  To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
your IQ?".  Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
"Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
%%
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater.  The clown
came out to inform the public.  They thought it was just a jest and
applauded.  He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder.  So I
think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
wits, who believe that it is a joke.
%%
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"
%%
It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
one can learn."
      -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program.  What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
      -- Alan Perlis
%%
It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
Urbana, Illinois.
%%
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend.  Your parents will
not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
mature human beings ...
      -- Playboy, January 1983
%%
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it.
      -- Henry Allen
%%
It is better never to have been born.  But who among us has such luck?
One in a million, perhaps.
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
%%
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
%%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
      -- Rod Serling
%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
      -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
focus of attention, the harder the task.
      -- Sydney J. Harris
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
Boulevard at one time.
%%
It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
%%
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
a tune.
      -- Woody Allen
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong.  Our
offense consists in doubting it.
      -- Justice Robert H. Jackson
%%
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
      -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
      -- Gore Vidal
%%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
      -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%%
It is now 10 p.m.  Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
      -- Elizabeth Carpenter
%%
It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.
%%
It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
dignity.
%%
It is only the great men who are truly obscene.  If they had not dared
to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
      -- Havelock Ellis
%%
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration.
      -- Dijkstra
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
until the other has gone.
%%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
      -- Carl Sandburg
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
      -- Hawkwind
%%
It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity.  But
it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
%%
It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the
future.
%%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%%
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
"It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory"
      -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%%
It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
municipality.
      -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."
      -- Robert Benchly
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
"It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set
foot."
%%
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
broken ...
      -- James Dent
%%
"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.  Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it.  I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at).  There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread.  One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime."
      -- Thomas Aldrich
%%
   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"
%%
It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly.  It was more like
the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%%
It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
examples.
      -- Charles Dickens
%%
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
two things still safe to eat.
      -- Robert Fuoss
%%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
      -- Andrew Jackson
%%
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
%%
"It's a summons."
"What's a summons?"
"It means summon's in trouble."
      -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
%%
It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
      -- Churchy La Femme
%%
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
%%
"It's bad luck to be superstitious."
      -- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.
      -- Marty Winch
%%
"It's easier said than done."

... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".
%%
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
being right.
%%
"It's Fabulous!  We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
      -- Macy's
%%
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
%%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is.  If you don't, it's its.  Then too, it's hers.  It isn't her's.  It
isn't our's either.  It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
      -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
%%
It's just a jump to the left
   And then a step to the right.
Put your hands on your hips
   And pull your knees in tight.
It's the pelvic thrust
   That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane

   LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!

      -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
%%
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
      -- Walt Disney
%%
"It's Like This"

Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk.
%%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%%
"It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name."
%%
It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
      -- Sam Goldwyn
%%
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
      -- George Burns
%%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
      -- Phil White
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
      -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
      -- Alexander Korda
%%
It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
what you're taking for it...
%%
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
the ground.
      -- Daniel B. Luten
%%
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
      -- Garfield
%%
It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
      -- Sydney J. Harris
%%
It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
Devil when he is the only explanation of it.
%%
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon.  Which
raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
not to.
      -- Franklin P. Jones
%%
It's the thought, if any, that counts!
%%
           JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
           by Mark Isaak

   Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
   So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
   "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
   "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
   "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
   Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
   "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
   No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
      -- Tom Stoppard
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
   It won't work.
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Job Placement, n.:
   Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
%%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%%
Johnson's First Law:
   When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Join in the new game that's sweeping the country.  It's called
"Bureaucracy".  Everybody stands in a circle.  The first person to do
anything loses.
%%
Join the march to save individuality!
%%
Jone's Law:
   The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%%
Jone's Motto:
   Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
Jones's First Law:
   Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
original contribution.
%%
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
      -- Bill Joy 6/21/85
%%
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
solutions seldom black or white.  Beware of the solution that requires
one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
winner.  The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
because neither side has all the facts.  Therefore, when the wise
mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
motivation.  Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
whole truth.
      -- Stephen R. Schwambach
%%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
changed.
      -- Irene Peter
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%%
Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
get a prompt, type like hell.
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
      -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
%%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%%
`Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
   As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
   By a finger entwined in his hair.

'Just the place for a Snark!  I have said it twice:
   That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark!  I have said it thrice:
   What I tell you three times is true.'
%%
Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
faster rat!!!
%%
Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
      -- Michael J. Wagner
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
      -- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Justice, n.:
   A decision in your favor.
%%
K:   Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
   Cobol's wordy and confining;
   KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
   Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
      -- The Roguelet's ABC
%%
Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
wear tail lights.
%%
Katz' Law:
   Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.
%%
Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
      - Hellman's Mayonnaise
%%
Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
   (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
       straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
       force is technically termed "car suck").
   (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
       than "Watch this!"
%%
Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now ... try to get something DONE!
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%%
Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
   Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
and parking for the faculty.
%%
Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents.  If you could
travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
grubs and berries like dad primate.  Then you'd see the primate
teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
      -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
         Do"
%%
Kin, n.:
   An affliction of the blood
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
   Responsibility always exceeds authority.

Kinkler's Second Law:
   All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."
%%
Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
any of its streets.
%%
Kiss me twice.  I'm schizophrenic.
%%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%%
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
%%
Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
%%
Kleptomaniac, n.:
   A rich thief.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
Know what I hate most?  Rhetorical questions.
      -- Henry N. Camp
%%
Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
   The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
      -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Labor, n.:
   One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Lackland's Laws:
   (1) Never be first.
   (2) Never be last.
   (3) Never volunteer for anything
%%
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"
%%
Ladybug, ladybug,
Look to your stern!
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn!
So jump ye and sing, for
The very first time
The four lines above
Have been put into rhyme.
      -- Walt Kelly
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Langsam's Laws:
   (1) Everything depends.
   (2) Nothing is always.
   (3) Everything is sometimes.
%%
Larkinson's Law:
   All laws are basically false.
%%
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
%%
"Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate.  I told this to
my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'"
      -- Steven Wright
%%
"Last week a cop stopped me in my car.  He asked me if I had a police
record.  I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album.  Cops have no sense
of humor."
%%
Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer.  Now I are won.
%%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%%
"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."  
      -- Victor Borge
%%
Law of Communications:
   The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.
%%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
   Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
distributed.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
   You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%%
Laws of Serendipity:

   (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
       something.
   (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
       be engaged in making an inferior one.
%%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
   No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%%
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
%%
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
everything else follows in the same way.
      -- Alan J. Perlis
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
fun?
%%
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
   "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
can."
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
   When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
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.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
"Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
number.  You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
and another number."
      -- James Estes
%%
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!

You first.
%%
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted.  In every
relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive.  If you
really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
end.  For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
qualities I most admired in myself I gave up.  I stopped being loud and
bossy ...  Oh, all right.  I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
his back."
      -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
%%
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
Mental Anguish.  You would sue:

* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
  section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
  into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
  in there".

* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
  cretin like yourself.

* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
  case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
  a large cash settlement anyway.
      -- 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"
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office.  We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places.  They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.

Yours faithfully,
   Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
   Sevenoaks
%%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
   The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
anyone, ever.
%%
Liar, n.:
   A lawyer with a roving commission.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
      -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%%
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.
%%
Lie, n.:
   A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
   Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
"Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it.  You have to
eat it nevertheless."
      -- Flaubert
%%
"Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
%%
Life is like a simile.
%%
Life is like an analogy
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%%
"Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove."
%%
"Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility"
      -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
%%
"Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
weren't for other people"
      -- Blore
%%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
      -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
      -- Alan McKay
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
   They usually have virgins,
   And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
Linus:   I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow.  Maybe
   we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
   No, that's giving up.  I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
   better.
%%
Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
      -- Candice Bergen
%%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
%%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
before.
%%
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
%%
Loan-department manager:  "There isn't any fine print.  At these
interest rates, we don't need it."
%%
Lobster:
   Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
only proper method of preparing them.  Frankly, the easiest way to
eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
before they're cooked.  The fact is, lobsters are among the most
ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
in the reefs.  Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
"Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
memory!"  The lobster will squirm noticeably.  It may even take a swipe
at you with one of its claws.  Incorrigible.  Pop it into the pot.
Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
too.
      -- "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils
         into Excuses and Apologies"
%%
Lockwood's Long Shot:
   The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
one in a million, but once would be enough.
%%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*.
%%
... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
legally ... impeccable!
%%
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
      -- Oliver Goldsmith
%%
Look out!  Behind you!
%%
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game.  You want us
to pay income taxes, too?
      -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
%%
Loose bits sink chips.
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA,
BOOGA!"
%%
Lost interest?  It's so bad I've lost apathy.
%%
Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
Halstead, Kansas.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%%
Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
      -- Sigmund Freud
%%
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
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
%%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
      -- Louise Beal
%%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
to.
%%
   Love's Drug

My love is like an iron wand 
   That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium 
   That I take before my bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch 
   That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still, my dear,
   Until my wife is wise.
%%
Lowery's Law:
   If it jams -- force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%%
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
   There's always one more bug.
%%
Lunatic Asylum, n.:
   The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
      -- Winston Churchill
%%
Machine-Independent, adj.:
   Does not run on any existing machine.
%%
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
and play games -- but not with pleasure.
      -- Leo Rosten
%%
Mad, adj.:
   Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
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
%%
MAFIA, n:
   [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS.  MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations.  From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions.  The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system.  Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
      -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%%
Magnocartic, adj.:
   Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
carts.
      -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%%
Maier's Law:
   If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed
   of.

Corollaries:
   (1) The bigger the theory, the better.
   (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
       50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
       obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Main's Law:
   For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%%
Maintainer's Motto:
   If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%%
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"
%%
Majority, n.:
   That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Make it myself?  But I'm a physical organic chemist!
%%
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system.  Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space.  It
has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
      -- System V.2 administrator's guide
%%
Malek's Law:
   Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
Man 1:   Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good
   joke is.

Man 2:   OK, what is the most impo --

Man 1:   ______TIMING!
%%
"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
      -- Lily Tomlin
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
      -- Mark Twain
%%
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
      -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
%%
Man, n.:
   An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
e is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His hief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own pecies, which,
however, multiplies with such insistent apidity as to infest the whole
habitable earth and Canada.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
Doctor:   "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
     don't think, right?"
      -- Dr. Who
%%
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"
%%
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 in in the others.
      -- Ray Simard
%%
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
%%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
   Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
simple yes or no answer.
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
      -- Voltaire
%%
Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
the dance floor.  Now everyone's doing it.  It's called grand slam
dancing.
      -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
%%
Maternity pay?   Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
      -- Malcolm Smith
%%
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
      -- R. Drabek
%%
Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
described as being n-dimensional.  Like modern sex, any number can
play.
      -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
         James Blish
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
      -- Jules Feiffer
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
%%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
      -- R. S. Barton
%%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
   If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.
%%
Meader's Law:
   Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
%%
Meeting, n.:
   An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri.  Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
had split before.  Thus was the Empire forged.
      -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
%%
Men's skin is different from women's skin.  It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it.  Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
   [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
    world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
    next few square feet of the woman's skin.  Thank you.]
... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"!  And what is even
more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying!  This is a
fact.  Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
hotshot cells moving up from below.
      -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%%
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 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 Second Law of The Average American:
   All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
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
never hope to acquire it.
%%
Menu, n.:
   A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
   There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%%
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%%
methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
   The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
   1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
      -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Micro Credo:
   Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Microwave oven?  Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven?  I've been
watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur.  It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
%%
Mike:   "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
Bernie:   "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays.  People are SO
   inconsiderate."
      -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
%%
Miksch's Law:
   If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
      -- Groucho Marx
%%
Millihelen, adj:
   The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
%%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
      -- Susan Ertz
%%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil.  "Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote."  Having abstained, they
are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
rummage around in their lives for the next four years.  Consider all
the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
Humphrey.  They showed Humphrey.  Those people who taught Hubert
Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
black.
      -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%%
Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Misery no longer loves company.  Nowadays it insists on it.
      -- Russell Baker
%%
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"
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
   Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.
%%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)

  Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie   36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water             2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar       2 tablespoons lemon juice
  Grated rind of one lemon         Butter or margarine
  Cinnamon

Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.  Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate.  Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes.  Add lemon
juice and rind.  Cool.  Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Cover with top
crust.  Trim and flute edges together.  Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape.  Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden.  Serve warm.  Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
      -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked
him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
last week.  The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
better.
%%
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"
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
   If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%%
Monday, n.:
   In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
%%
Money is the root of all wealth.
%%
Moon, n.:
   1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
hackers.  See PHASE OF THE MOON.  2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
%%
Mophobia, n.:
   Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
%%
      MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
Saturday night.  The match started with a long period of silence while
the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
paraphrase.  The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
their anal-retentive personalities.  At this the Rogerians' star player
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka."  This started a
fight and the match was called by officials.
%%
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
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
   Don't worry if it doesn't work right.  If everything did, you'd
be out of a job.
%%
Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
eyes.  So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away.  Then the male, driven
by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs.  So the
truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
them that it doesn't make any difference.
      -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
         Teen Should Know"
%%
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
than they do.
      -- Turgenev
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
      -- Frank Zappa
%%
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
      -- Arnold Bennett
%%
Mother is the invention of necessity.
%%
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
   The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%%
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
"365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365.  He [ten-year-old
Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!"  An electronic
computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
fun to watch.
      -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
%%
Murphy's Discovery:
   Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
women?  They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
will be all right."  And what happens?  Nine months later, you're in
trouble!
%%
Murphy's Law is recursive.  Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
   Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
"Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
      -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%%
   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 Yiddish"
%%
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"
%%
"My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on
it."
      -- "Grendel", by John Gardner
%%
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
threw my amplifier out the dormitory window.  We did not act in haste.
First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door.  Then we rushed
forward, shouting "The WHO!  The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
crowd had gathered.  I would like to be able to say that this was a
symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
really just wanted to find out what it would sound like.  It sounded
OK.
      -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%%
My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right
through my ALU.  I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens.  I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%%
"My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
   -- MadameX
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
   And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
   In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
   Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
   And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
      -- Dorothy Parker
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
   And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
   And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
   As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
   And I wish he were in Asia.
      -- Dorothy Parker
%%
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been
one.
      -- Groucho Marx
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
   And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
   And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
   Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
   And I wish I'd never met him.
      -- Dorothy Parker
%%
"My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
Alley!!"
      -- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which, being finished, here the story ends;
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
      -- Byron
%%
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not
signed.
      -- Christopher Morley
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
%%
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"
%%
Naeser's Law:
   You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?  Everything he
     says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
     will be right.
      -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%%
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity.  The servant
said "My master is out."  Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window.  Someone
might steal it."
%%
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
villagers gathered around to hear what had passed.  "At this time,"
said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me."  All the
villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news.  The
remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?"  "What he
said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
%%
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
serve him.  Nasrudin said, "First things first.  Did you see me walk
into your shop?"  "Of course."  "Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never."  "Then how do you know it was me?"
%%
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
than the sun."  "Why?", he was asked.  "Because at night we need the
light more."
%%
Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
pie.  Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
meat from his hand.  As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
"Foolish bird!  You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
the recipe?"
%%
Nature abhors a hero.  For one thing, he violates the law of
conservation of energy.  For another, how can it be the survival of the
fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
is most likely to be creamed?
      -- Solomon Short
%%
Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
      -- Fran Leibowitz
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
      -- Lin Yutang
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.
%%
Never commit yourself!  Let someone else commit you.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
%%
Never drink coke in a moving elevator.  The elevator's motion coupled
with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations.  People tend to
change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
fly in the window.  Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
have windows.
%%
Never eat more than you can lift.
      -- Miss Piggy
%%
Never hit a man with glasses.  Hit him with a baseball bat.
%%
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
%%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
      -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
%%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
substance.
      -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.  There might be a
law against it by that time.
%%
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
%%
Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
      -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
      -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
%%
"Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
%%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
      -- R. A. Heinlein
%%
New crypt.  See /usr/news/crypt.
%%
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
%%
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself.  Apply within.
%%
New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
      -- Monty Python's Big Red Book
%%
New systems generate new problems.
%%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
      -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%%
New York is real.  The rest is done with mirrors.
%%
New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
      -- The Grateful Dead
%%
Newlan's Truism:
   An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%%
         *** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!  Details at eleven!
%%
Newton's Fourth Law:  Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
   A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.  As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
      -- F. J. Raymond
%%
"Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice."
      -- Foghorn Leghorn
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth).  Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%%
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;

One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
%%
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
   And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
   And tapes mixed up on the racks --
      Take hold of the tape
      And pull off the strip,
      And then you'll be sure
      Your tape drive will skip.

      -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%%
"Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
would.  The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
that much."
      -- Augustine
%%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
   The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
%%
"Nirvana?  Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends
hang out.
      -- Zonker Harris
%%
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
      -- Fran Lebowitz
%%
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
effectively under such difficult conditions.
      -- Laurence J. Peter
%%
No good deed goes unpunished.
      -- Clare Boothe Luce
%%
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
eating one peanut.
      -- Channing Pollock
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
seriously cramp his style.
%%
No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
%%
"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
%%
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
the author.
      -- Chris Shaw
%%
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
CHORUS:
   Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
   And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
   Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
   And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
      (chorus)
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
      (chorus)
%%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
%%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%%
"No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
an indication-applied occurrence."
      -- ALGOL 68 Report
%%
"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
paper."
      -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
         taken over by Rupert Murdoch
%%
   No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider
the furniture!
      -- Sherlock Holmes
%%
"No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
      -- Dr. Who
%%
Nobody can be exactly like me.  Sometimes even I have trouble doing
it.
      -- Tallulah Bankhead
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
%%
Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
%%
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
and rob the old.
      -- Lewis Lapham
%%
Nobody wants constructive criticism.  It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%%
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
%%
Noncombatant, n.:
   A dead Quaker.
      -- Ambrose Bierce
%%
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
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"
%%
"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
      -- Shakespeare
%%
"Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
is from the wrong kind of tree."
      -- Professor W.
%%
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
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
light comes on.
%%
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
      -- Nero Wolfe
%%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
love.
      -- Charlie Brown
%%
November, n.:
   The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
      -- Walt Kelly
%%
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
to plug her latest book.  And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
the following questions:

(1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
    food?
(2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
    exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
(3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
    prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
    double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai?  (Remember, living
    right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
    longer.)

That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
%%
"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
      -- "The Begatting of a President"
%%
"Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm.  Gag me with a
smurfette."
      -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
%%
... 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"
%%
   Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
tool sets for under $4?"  An excellent question.
   Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
administration.  In either the hardware or housewares department,
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home.  Buy it.
   This is the kind of tool set professionals use.  Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
direct sunlight.
      -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%%
"Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of 
normal routines, for children and adults alike."
      -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
%%
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
      -- Edwin Meese III
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
guessing.
%%
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?
%%
"Of ______course it's the murder weapon.  Who would frame someone with a
fake?"
%%
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
      -- Thomas L. Martin
%%
Of all the words of witch's doom
There's none so bad as which and whom.
The man who kills both which and whom
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
      -- Fletcher Knebel
%%
"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix.  Everyone knows power
tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..."
      -- Crazy Nigel
%%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%%
Of what you see in books, believe 75%.  Of newspapers, believe 50%.
And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
blazer.
%%
Office Automation, n.:
   The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
you would want to talk with over coffee.
%%
Ogden's Law:
   The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
up.
%%
Oh Dad!  We're ALL Devo!
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
   When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
   With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
   I muck with indices and structs all day
And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
   Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
%%
Oh, I don't blame Congress.  If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
be irresponsible, too.
      -- Lichty & Wagner
%%
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
      -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
%%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
   Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
   How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
   And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
   Am quite myself again.
      -- A. E. Housman
%%
Oh, wow!  Look at the moon!
%%
"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
      -- Dr. Joy
%%
OK, so you're a Ph.D.  Just don't touch anything.
%%
Old programmers never die.  They just branch to a new address.
%%
Oliver's Law:
   Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
it.
%%
Omnibiblious, adj.:
   Indifferent to type of drink.  "Oh, you can get me anything.
I'm omnibiblious."
%%
OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS??  Oh, YEH!!  First you need four GALLONS of
JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:

"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
      -- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
what it does.
      -- Will Rogers
%%
   On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65.  The next day his take was $67.  The third day's
income was $62.  But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
   "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier.  "This is fantastic.  That
route never brought in money like this!  What happened?"
   "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there.  I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
      -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%%
On the subject of C program indentation:

   "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
   indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
      -- Blair P. Houghton
%%
On-line, adj.:
   The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%%
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"
%%
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"
%%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
principals or your mistress".
%%
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"
%%
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
sky.
      -- Rainer Rilke
%%
   Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river.  Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.  But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going.  I shall let go, and let it take me where it will.  Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
   The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool!  Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
   But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
   And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle!  A creature like ourselves, yet he flies!  See the
Messiah, come to save us all!"  And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you.  The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go.  Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
   But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
%%
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.

2:  The Odd Prime --
   It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
3:  The True Prime --
   Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
   Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime
   in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91
   received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
   next most.  However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
   at all.

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
%%
... 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"
%%
Once, adv.:
   Enough.
      -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
somebody's listening.
      -- Franklin P. Jones
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
      -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
%%
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
the truth.  A gallows was erected in front of the city gates.  A herald
announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
a question which will be put to him."  Nasrudin was first in line.  The
captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going?  Tell the truth
-- the alternative is death by hanging."  "I am going," said Nasrudin,
"to be hanged on that gallows."  "I don't believe you."  "Very well, if
I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
      -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
%%
One learns to itch where one can scratch.
      -- Ernest Bramah
%%
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
one man would have produced alone.  These two plus two more will
produce half again as many ideas.  These four plus four more begin to
represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
many ...
      -- Anthony Chevins
%%
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
%%
One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
will it live?"  The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
I'll tell you."
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
from one end to the other.  Reading the Bible straight through is at
least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin.  But the good parts
are, of course, simply amazing.  God is an extremely uneven writer, but
when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
      -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
%%
"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs."
      -- Robert Firth
%%
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 Yiddish"
%%
   One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
   Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago.  Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with.  It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines.  And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
   It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
   With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there.  That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
      -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
%%
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
seat to another passenger.  This may seem callous, but it is the best
way, really.  If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
%%
The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
   Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
other ways.
%%
The First Commandment for Technicians:
   Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
untechnician-like manner.
%%
One Page Principle:
   A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
paper cannot be understood.
      -- Mark Ardis
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips.  Let's
say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
sherbet.  Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
rendering him too large to fit through the plane door.  It could also
be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law.  ("Mr.
Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
Inspection Month?  And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
support a law requiring airbags on congressmen.  The problem is that
your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
      -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%%
One reason why George Washington
Is held in such veneration:
He never blamed his problems
On the former Administration.
      -- George O. Ludcke
%%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
paint.
%%
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
new model.
%%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%%
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
at the stake while the votes were being counted.
      -- Thomas B. Reed
%%
One-Shot Case Study, n.:
   The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
green.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
use the editorial "we."
%%
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
Oregano, n.:
   The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
%%
Oregon, n.:
   Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.
%%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.  Biochemistry
is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
      -- Mike Adams
%%
Osborn's Law:
   Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
nails.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
office.  He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
were both holding bags of popcorn.  We were both holding bottles of
juice.  But only *__he* had a lollipop.

He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"

Her reply:

   "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to.  That's what it
   means to be a programmer."
%%