1.  
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
2.  
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
		-- G. K. Chesterton
3.  
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
		-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
4.  
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
		-- John F. Kennedy
5.  
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
protein -- it rejects it.
		-- P. Medawar
6.  
Stupid, n.:
	Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
7.  
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
	If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
	$19.95.
8.  
Hi there!  This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
9.  
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
		-- Noelie Altito
10.  
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
11.  
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
12.  
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
		-- Salvor Hardin
13.  
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
14.  
			Pittsburgh Driver's Test

8:	Pedestrians are

	(a) irrelevant.
	(b) communists.
	(c) a nuisance.
	(d) difficult to clean off the front grille.

The correct answer is (a).  Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
15.  
Happiness, n.:
	An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
16.  
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
	1.  An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
	    direction.
	2.  An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
	3.  The energy required to change either one of these states
	    will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
	    much as to make the task totally impossible.
17.  
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D.  He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd).  This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:

	"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
	it is absurd.  And buried he rose again, which is certain
	because it is impossible."

Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
		-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types

(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
18.  
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.
19.  
You've been leading a dog's life.  Stay off the furniture.
20.  
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
		-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
21.  
"I drink to make other people interesting."
		-- George Jean Nathan
22.  
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
23.  
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
24.  
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
25.  
Boling's postulate:
	If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.
26.  
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
	"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
	Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
	"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
	Why, I do it again and again."
		-- Lewis Carrol
27.  
Egotist, n.:
	A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
28.  
Good day for overcoming obstacles.  Try a steeplechase.
29.  
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
30.  
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
		-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
31.  
All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around
you.  Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making
average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents,
insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll
realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins
in the Sears menswear department dress.  Now look at the real
successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John,
Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on.  They
all dress funny -- and they all succeed.  Are you catching on?
		-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
32.  
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
		-- Mickey Mouse
33.  
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
34.  
"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating"
		-- Boss Tweed
35.  
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
		-- Ursula K. LeGuin
36.  
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
37.  
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
38.  
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights!
39.  
The rain it raineth on the just
	And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
	The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
40.  
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
longer."
		-- Henry Kissinger
41.  
"In short, N is Richardian if, and only if, N is not Richardian."
42.  
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
	Support your right to bare arms!
43.  
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
44.  
Sweater, n.:
	A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
45.  
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!
46.  
What this country needs is a good 5 dollar plasma weapon.
47.  
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
48.  
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
49.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
50.  
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"
51.  
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.
52.  
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
53.  
It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.
54.  
	"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly.  "In the past
year strange and fearful wonders I have seen.  Fields sown with barley
reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
artichoke hearts.  There has been a hot day in December and a blue
moon.  Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen.  The earth splits and the
entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots.  The face of the
sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."

	"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.

	"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
good copy."
		-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
55.  
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.

"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
56.  
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
	"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
whistles?"
	I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
	"A herring," said my father.
	"A herring," I echoed.  "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
	"So hang it there."
	"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
	"Paint it."
	"But a herring isn't wet."
	"If its just painted its still wet."
	"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
	"Right, " smiled my father.  "I just put that in to make it
hard."
		-- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
57.  
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
58.  
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
		-- Albert Einstein
59.  
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
60.  
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
		-- Swinburne
61.  
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
62.  
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
		-- Kim Hubbard
63.  
Get Revenge!  Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
64.  
"Of course it's the murder weapon.  Who would frame someone with a
fake?"
65.  
We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
66.  
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
supercomputers.
		-- Steven Feiner
67.  
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
		-- Mae West
68.  
IBM had a PL/I,
	Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
	It was a total loss.
69.  
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
70.  
God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
smoking and drinking beer.  But the man who cannot live on bread and
water is not fit to live!  A family may live on good bread and water in
the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
night!
		-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
71.  
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
		-- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
72.  
Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city
nativity scene removed:
	"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men
	and a virgin in the whole organization."
73.  
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
74.  
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on 
Some people's n'oeuvres.
		-- Warren Knox
75.  
Brook's Law:
	Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
76.  
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
77.  
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
	The number of people in any working group tends to increase
	regardless of the amount of work to be done.
78.  
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
entrance?
79.  
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
80.  
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen.  At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
81.  
			-- Gifts for Children --

This is easy.  You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want.  They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements.  Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices.  If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it.  You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
		-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
82.  
Critic, n.:
	A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
83.  
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
84.  
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
	Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
	be liable to a fine of one pound.  Any animal leading a blind
	person shall be deemed to be a cat.
85.  
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.
86.  
This fortune intentionally not included.
87.  
Truthful, adj.:
	Dumb and illiterate.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
88.  
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
89.  
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
90.  
God is not dead!  He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
91.  
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
92.  
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
for going backwards.
		-- Aldous Huxley
93.  
Second Law of Business Meetings:
	If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
	will pick the wrong one.

Corollary:
	If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
	wrong, anyway.
94.  
A large number of installed systems work by fiat.  That is, they work
by being declared to work.
		-- Anatol Holt
95.  
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
		-- Mark Twain
96.  
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
		-- Alan Perlis
97.  
Conversation, n.:
	A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
is called the listener.
98.  
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
99.  
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
	1.  If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
	    once.
	2.  If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
	    points.
100.  
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
	That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
	Don't you think that you should save your breath?"

"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
	Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
	Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
101.  
"A witty saying proves nothing."
		-- Voltaire
102.  
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
103.  
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
		-- Graham Summer
104.  
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
money is.
		-- Robespierre
105.  
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
106.  
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
107.  
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
108.  
I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.
		-- Oscar Wilde
109.  
Gold, n.:
	A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution.  It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
110.  
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc.  These pioneers conducted
many important electrical experiments.  For example, in 1780 Luigi
Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
attached to the frog, which was dead anyway.  Galvani's discovery led
to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine.  Today,
skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
		-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
111.  
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
112.  
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
`social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
		-- Ernest Rutherford
113.  
A new koan:

	If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.

	If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.

It is an ice cream koan.
114.  
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself.  Apply within.
115.  
Everything you know is wrong!
116.  
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
		-- Clarence Darrow
117.  
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
	A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
118.  
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
119.  
Concept, n.:
	Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
$25,000.
120.  
Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out if it alive.
121.  
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
122.  
	SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic.  You have a reckless tendency to
rely on luck since you lack talent.  The majority of Sagittarians are
drunks or dope fiends or both.  People laugh at you a great deal.
123.  
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic.  A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
124.  
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter
swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
		-- Dizzy Dean
125.  
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
126.  
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)

Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
127.  
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
		-- Alan Perlis
128.  
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.
129.  
When in doubt, use brute force.
		-- Ken Thompson
130.  
I'm in Pittsburgh.  Why am I here?
		-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
131.  
Help!  I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
132.  
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
		-- Dorothy Parker
133.  
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
134.  
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
135.  
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
136.  
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.
137.  
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.  You'll learn a lot
today.
138.  
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:

	1.  They all had moderate appetites.
	2.  They all came from middle class homes
	3.  All but two of them were dead.
139.  
The three laws of thermodynamics:

The First Law:	You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law:	The most you can accomplish by working is to break
		even.
The Third Law:	You can only break even at absolute zero.
140.  
Greener's Law:
	Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
141.  
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
		-- Thomas Edison
142.  
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
143.  
Distress, n.:
	A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
144.  
/Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
145.  
Ducharm's Axiom:
	If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
	yourself as part of the problem.
146.  
Hartley's Second Law:
	Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
147.  
Overdrawn?  But I still have checks left!
148.  
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
149.  
[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"
150.  
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
151.  
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser.  The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caeser really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down.
152.  
If you drop a coin in the forest and no one heard it.  Was their a coin?
153.  
			DELETE A FORTUNE!

Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?!  Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system?  You can!  Just mail to
"fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
154.  
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
	But she started absorbin'
	A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
155.  
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.  In fact,
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent. (R. Emerson)"
		-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
		   (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
		   [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
		   misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
156.  
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
		-- Eleanor Roosevelt
157.  
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
158.  
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
159.  
Hacker's Law:
	The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
	a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
160.  
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
161.  
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
162.  
Keep America beautiful.  Swallow your beer cans.
163.  
Adult, n.:
	One old enough to know better.
164.  
They told me you had proven it		When they discovered our results
	About a month before.			Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less	Instead of understanding it
	But rather less than more.		We'd run the thing through PRL.

He sent them word that we would try	Don't tell a soul about all this
	To pass where they had failed		For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them		A secret, kept from all the rest
	The new proof would be mailed.		Between yourself and me.

My notion was to start again
	Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
	To see if it would run.
165.  
Bipolar, adj.:
	Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
New York
166.  
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve.  Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem.  Work hard to
improve.
167.  
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
		-- Benjamin Disraeli
168.  
"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
169.  
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
		-- F. J. Raymond
170.  
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
		-- Mark Twain
171.  
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
172.  
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
173.  
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
		-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
174.  
Cleveland still lives.  God must be dead.
175.  
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
		-- F. M. Hubbard
176.  
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!  SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
177.  
Basic, n.:
	A programming language.  Related to certain social diseases in
that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
178.  
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
179.  
Shaw's Principle:
	Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
	want to use it.
180.  
Dawn, n.:
	The time when men of reason go to bed.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
181.  
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
182.  
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I  !pleH
183.  
	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.
184.  
Documentation is the castor oil of programming.  Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
185.  
Justice is incidental to law and order.
		-- J. Edgar Hoover
186.  
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.
187.  
Tussman's Law:
	Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
188.  
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
of).
189.  
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
		-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
190.  
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
191.  
//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
192.  
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
		-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
193.  
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
		-- Anatole France
194.  
PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
	Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
	American Express card and a weapon.  The world is yours today,
	as nobody else wants it.  Your mortgage will be foreclosed.
	You will probably get run over by a bus.
195.  
A new dramatist of the absurd
Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
	I learn from my spies
	He's about to devise
An unprintable three-letter word.
196.  
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
197.  
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
		-- John O'Hara
198.  
"When in doubt, tell the truth."
		-- Mark Twain
199.  
Pohl's law:
	Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
200.  
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
201.  
Law of Selective Gravity:
	An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
	The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
	directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
202.  
Fine day to throw a party.  Throw him as far as you can.
203.  
Ehrman's Commentary:
	1.  Things will get worse before they get better.
	2.  Who said things would get better?
204.  
I like your game but we have to change the rules.
205.  
How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.

How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
206.  
		William Safire's Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive.  The passive voice should never
be used.  Do not put statements in the negative form.  Verbs have to
agree with their subjects.  Proofread carefully to see if you words
out.  If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.  A writer must
not shift your point of view.  And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction.  (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.)  Don't overuse exclamation marks!!  Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents.  Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided.  If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is.  Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors.  Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.  Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing.  Always pick on the correct idiom.  The adverb always follows
the verb.  Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
207.  
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known
as Wheels.
208.  
Paul's Law:
	You can't fall off the floor.
209.  
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
		-- Woody Allen
210.  
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
exam.
211.  
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
212.  
There are three ways to get something done:
	1. Do it yourself.
	2. Hire someone to do it for you.
	3. Forbid your kids to do it.
213.  
Turnaucka's Law:
	The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
	electrical cord.
214.  
All things are possible except skiing thru a revolving door.
215.  
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
		-- Mark Twain
216.  
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
217.  
Labor, n.:
	One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
218.  
Message will arrive in the mail.  Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
219.  
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
		-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
220.  
Hatred, n.:
	A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
221.  
Nobody wants constructive criticism.  It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
222.  
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"
223.  
A.A.A.A.A.:
	An organization for drunks who drive
224.  
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.  They gave him
love and he invented marriage.
225.  
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
symposium to follow.
226.  
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
227.  
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
		-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
228.  
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
the real reason.
229.  
		AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
230.  
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
231.  
"That must be wonderful!  I don't understand it at all."
232.  
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
		-- F. Allen
233.  
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
		-- Albert Einstein
234.  
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
235.  
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"
236.  
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
237.  
I am changing my name to Crysler
I am going down to Washington, D.C.
I will tell some power broker
	What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I am changing my name to Chrysler,
I am 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!
238.  
Hartley's First Law:
	You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
	on his back, you've got something.
239.  
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
240.  
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
	Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
	equipment ruined.
241.  
"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"
242.  
Langsam's Laws:
	1) Everything depends.
	2) Nothing is always.
	3) Everything is sometimes.
243.  
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
	And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
	Because the paging thrashes!

		Wow!  Wow!  Wow!

I speak severely to my VAX,
	And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
	My jobs it always thrashes!

		Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
244.  
There were in this country two very large monopolies.  The larger of
the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard.  The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite.  Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
245.  
X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
246.  
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
247.  
I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people
waiting to abuse me.
		--Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
248.  
"Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you ..."
		--- Gilda Radner
249.  
New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
		-- The Grateful Dead
250.  
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
251.  
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
252.  
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
		-- Merrick Furst
253.  
Sattinger's Law:
	It works better if you plug it in.
254.  
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
		-- Stephen Crane
255.  
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
256.  
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
257.  
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
258.  
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly.  If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

So, for guidance, you want to look to big business.  Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
		-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
259.  
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
260.  
A day without sunshine is like night.
261.  
Pascal, n.:
	A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
262.  
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
263.  
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
264.  
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.  I
hope I don't get run over again.
265.  
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
266.  
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"
267.  
Vote anarchist
268.  
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
269.  
Things will be bright in P.M.  A cop will shine a light in your face.
270.  
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
271.  
Gray's Law of Programming:
	`n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
	time as `n' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
	`n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `n' trivial tasks.
272.  
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
		-- W. Somerset Maughm
273.  
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
274.  
Weiler's Law:
	Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
	himself.
275.  
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
store.	Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology?  Remember how all
the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published?  Are
they taking no-fault insurance lying down?  No way!  But at the current
rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters.  Who's going to be
impressed with us electrical engineers then?  Are we, as the saying
goes, giving away the store?
		-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
276.  
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
		-- E. W. Dijkstra
277.  
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
	Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
	time he will pick himself up and continue on.
278.  
(1)	Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2)	Great generals are forewarned.
(3)	Forewarned is forearmed.
(4)	Four is an even number.
(5)	Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6)	The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.

Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
279.  
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
280.  
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
281.  
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
	The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and
gets stuck.
282.  
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but ...
	-- I have to floss my cat.
	-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
	-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
	-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
	-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
	-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
	-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
	-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
	-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
	-- I have some really hard words to look up.
	-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
	-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
283.  
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.  It is never any
use to oneself.
		-- Oscar Wilde
284.  
Malek's Law:
	Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
285.  
	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
286.  
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
287.  
User n.:
	A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
288.  
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how not to.  So it is with the great programmers.
289.  
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
	The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
290.  
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner.  His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
		-- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
291.  
Screw up your courage!  You've screwed up everything else.
292.  
... 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"
293.  
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
	And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
	Have you thought about taking a hike?"

"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
	"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
	And don't realize that they've been had."
294.  
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
295.  
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities.  Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in.  Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
RULES.  You're allowed to do anything.  You can drive as fast as you
want in any direction you want.  I was once driving in a mall parking
lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
neither.  This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
lots.
		-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
296.  
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
297.  
Save energy: be apathetic.
298.  
"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."  
		-- Victor Borge
299.  
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.
300.  
ADA, n.:
	Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing.  Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
awareness."
301.  
Keep emotionally active.  Cater to your favorite neurosis.
302.  
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury.  Due north of the
center we find the South End.  This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End.  North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
303.  
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):

Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs.  This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse.  But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs.  Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs.  But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
304.  
Stop searching.  Happiness is right next to you.  Now, if they'd only
take a bath ...
305.  
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
306.  
Look out!  Behind you!






















307.  
Your lucky color has faded.
308.  
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
		-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
309.  
Spirtle, n.:
	The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
your eye.
		-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
310.  
"Don't say yes until I finish talking."
		-- Darryl F. Zanuck
311.  
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
312.  
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
	If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
	it wasn't worth doing.
313.  
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
314.  
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
	No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
	legislature is in session.
315.  
Real Time, adj.:
	Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
and then.
316.  
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
317.  
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
318.  
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
	Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
	probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
	some useful work done.
319.  
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
		-- H. L. Mencken
320.  
Barth's Distinction:
	There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
	types, and those who don't.
321.  
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
		-- Bill Murray
322.  
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
323.  
	Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
	As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it.  I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane.  But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade.  Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
	The disease is fatal.  There is no known cure.  The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor.  From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease.  I don't have it this morning.  It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
		   from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
		   and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
324.  
I am ready to meet my Maker.  Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
		-- Winston Churchill
325.  
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,d
yopeHi 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
331.  
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
332.  
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet.  Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
		-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
333.  
In English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
334.  
	"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
	"No," Said Gandalf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:

	"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
	Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
	Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
	This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
	The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
	The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
	If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
	If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
335.  
A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a "round tuit" now
has no excuse for further procrastination.
336.  
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
keys ..."
337.  
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
		-- Bertold Brecht
338.  
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
	Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
	corner of the workshop.

Corollary:
	On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
	your toes.
339.  
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
		-- Charles McCabe
340.  
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.
341.  
Rule of Defactualization:
	Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
342.  
Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
343.  
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
344.  
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?
345.  
First Law of Bicycling:
	No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
	wind.
346.  
Actor:	So what do you do for a living?
Doris:	I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
	dishes for Chinese restaurants.
		-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
347.  
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
348.  
Whistler's Law:
	You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
	charge.
349.  
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
		-- Abbie Hoffman
350.  
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything?  It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
351.  
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
352.  
	An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
	"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this.  Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour.  But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
	The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
		-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
353.  
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
		-- Don Quinn
354.  
Lieberman's Law:
	Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
355.  
Broad-mindedness, n.:
	The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
356.  
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.
357.  
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
	You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
358.  
Wiker's Law:
	Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
359.  
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
360.  
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
		-- Ted Turner
361.  
Write-Protect Tab, n.:
	A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
left by disk manufacturers.  The use of the tab creates an error
message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
momentary inconvenience.
		-- Robb Russon
362.  
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
363.  
LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
	Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
	desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal.  Be gracious and
	polite.  Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
364.  
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928.  Watch for it everywhere.
365.  
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
366.  
Dear Lord:
	I just want *one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
	the other hand", again.
367.  
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
368.  
Watson's Law:
	The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
	number and significance of any persons watching it.
^S369.  
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
		-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
370.  
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
371.  
Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
		-- W. Somerset Maugham
372.  
University, n.:
	Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
373.  
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.
374.  
Take everything in stride.  Trample anyone who gets in your way.
375.  
Surprise due today.  Also the rent.
376.  
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.
377.  
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.  The label means the
price went up.  The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
378.  
If you can't be good, be careful.  If you can't be careful, give me a
call.
379.  
Admiration, n.:
	Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
380.  
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
381.  
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
382.  
^QA solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was
waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
		-- Mark Twain
383.  
Shamus, n.:
	A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
	A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
	A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"  The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
	The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!"  The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
		-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
384.  
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
385.  
			-- Gifts for Men --

Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy.  But you
should never buy them clothes.  Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous.  For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them.  He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at.  If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.

If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires.  More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
		-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
386.  
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
		-- Mark Twain
387.  
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
		-- Richard M. Nixon
388.  
Rule of Feline Frustration:
	When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
	content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
	bathroom.
389.  
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
390.  
Cinemuck, n.:
	The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
covers the floors of movie theaters.
		-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
391.  
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
392.  
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
	He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
	Must be a pacifist.

	What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
		-- Arlo Guthrie
393.  
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
		-- Abraham Lincoln
394.  
Coward, n.:
	One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
395.  
Heaven, n.:
	A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
396.  
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
		-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
397.  
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I.  PL/I is for programmers who
can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
398.  
Future looks spotty.  You will spill soup in late evening.
399.  
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
400.  
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
	That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
	or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
	should have gotten.
401.  
	"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
	"Diet."
402.  
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy?  That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
and women, such as are we all?  And thus happily sent forth, at our
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"

"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
		-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
403.  
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
404.  
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!

You first.
405.  
Never eat more than you can lift.
		-- Miss Piggy
406.  
Weinberg's Second Law:
	If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
	then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
	civilization.
407.  
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
		-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
408.  
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
		-- Eugene P. Gallagher
409.  
"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?  Have I
explained yet about the bytes?"
410.  
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
411.  
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of
pre-Adamite ancestral descent.  You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule.  Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable.  I can't help it.  I was born sneering.
		-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
412.  
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
		-- English Professor
413.  
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
		-- Woody Allen
414.  
Menu, n.:
	A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
415.  
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
		-- A. Einstein
416.  
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
		-- Oscar Wilde
417.  
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
	From "The Thirteen Clocks"
418.  
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
		-- Bertrand Russell
419.  
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
420.  
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:

	Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
	Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of
	Corporate Planning."
421.  
Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."
422.  
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
	Celibacy is not hereditary.
423.  
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
424.  
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
		-- H. L. Mencken
425.  
	The men sat sipping their tea in silence.  After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."

	"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other.  "Why?"

	"How should I know?  What am I, a philosopher?"
426.  
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
427.  
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
	Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
	handle.
428.  
This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
429.  
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
		-- Mark Twain
430.  
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
431.  
Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do.
432.  
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are.
433.  
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
434.  
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
435.  
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
436.  
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
437.  
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
438.  
Maier's Law:
	If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
	disposed of.

Corollaries:
	1.  The bigger the theory, the better.
	2.  The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
	    50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
	    obtain a correspondence with the theory.
439.  
Never call a man a fool.  Borrow from him.
440.  
Fairy Tale, n.:
	A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
441.  
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
		-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
442.  
Be different: conform.
443.  
"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
		-- Jeff Berner
444.  
... 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"
445.  
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail.  Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
446.  
		      THE STORY OF CREATION
			       or
			 THE MYTH OF URK

In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code.  And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt ...
		-- Rico Tudor
447.  
Justice is incidental to law and order.
		-- J. Edgar Hoover
448.  
This fortune is false.
449.  
"Can Grass grow in Space?" NASA's next mission Experiment
450.  
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
80-column card.
		-- Dennis M. Ritchie
451.  
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
		-- William James
452.  
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd.  The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
one has ever been.
		-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
453.  
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
	She found a good way
	To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
454.  
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
455.  
Polymer physicists are into chains.
456.  
Afternoon very favorable for romance.  Try a single person for a
change.
457.  
Johnson's First Law:
	When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
	most inconvenient possible time.
458.  
		A Severe Strain on the Credulity

As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device.  It is when one
considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
		-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
459.  
Surprise your boss.  Get to work on time.
460.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore."
461.  
Finagle's Third Law:
	In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
	beyond all need of checking, is the mistake

Corollaries:
	1.  Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
	2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
	    don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
462.  
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866.  The
white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
name had hilarious possibilities.  The crowds fell about, helpless with
laughter, singing
	Half a pound of tuppenny rice
	Half a pound of treacle
	That's the way the chimney smokes
	Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
laughter streaming down their faces.  The event set a record for
hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
Hans Neizant Bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of Koln in 1653.
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
463.  
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
464.  
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author.
		-- S. C. Johnson
465.  
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
466.  
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
467.  
God rest ye CS students now,
Let nothing you dismay.
The VAX is down and won't be up,
Until the first of May.
The program that was due this morn,
Won't be postponed, they say.

	Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
	Comfort and joy,
	Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.

The bearings on the drum are gone,
The disk is wobbling, too.
We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Can't tell false from true.
And now we find that we can't get
At Berkeley's 4.2.

	(chorus)
468.  
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
	That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
	What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
	Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
	Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
		-- Lewis Carrol
469.  
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
470.  
George Orwell was an optimist.
471.  
Hindsight is an exact science.
472.  
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
	Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
	out.
473.  
New systems generate new problems.
474.  
Sturgeon's Law:
	90% of everything is crud.
475.  
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
476.  
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
		-- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
477.  
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- SARTRE

Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
unstructured language.  Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
are.  Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
parties.
478.  
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
		-- Edgar A. Shoaff
479.  
Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):

		Don't Write On Walls!

		   (and underneath)

		You want I should type?
480.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
garage door."
481.  
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?

And he answered:

It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.

It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.

It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.

And that is Fate?  said the priest.

Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.

That's all right, said the priest.  I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
		-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
482.  
Westheimer's Discovery:
	A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
	couple of hours in the library.
483.  
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
484.  
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
		-- LaRouchefoucauld
485.  
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
	If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
486.  
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
		-- Clarence Darrow
487.  
Actor:	"I'm a smash hit.  Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
	everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford:	"Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Clever of you to think of
	it!"
488.  
Year, n.:
	A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
489.  
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.
490.  
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
491.  
"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"
492.  
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
		-- Howard Kandel
493.  
Give thought to your reputation.  Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
494.  
Do not drink coffee in early A.M.  It will keep you awake until noon.
495.  
Cynic, n.:
	A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be.  Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
496.  
"The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
497.  
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
		-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
498.  
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
499.  
Scotty:	Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk:	Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock:	Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk:	Then it's of external origin?
Spock:	Affirmative.
Kirk:	Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu:	Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
500.  
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
		-- Herb Caen
501.  
Non determinism means never having to say you are wrong.
502.  
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
		-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
503.  
	... This striving for excellence extends into people's
personal lives as well.  When '80s people buy something, they buy the
best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability.
Eighties people buy imported dental floss.  They buy gourmet baking
soda.  If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a
reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their
table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is
not an excellent restaurant.  If it were, it would have an enormous
crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their
beepers going off like crickets in the night.  An excellent restaurant
wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of
Liza Minnelli.
		-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
504.  
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
		-- Tom Leher
505.  
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
		-- Paul Beatty
506.  
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us.  "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
507.  
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
		-- Peggy Joyce
508.  
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
		-- Mark Twain
509.  
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
		-- J. Paul Getty
510.  
Decisionmaker, n.:
	The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
before the music stopped.
511.  
	"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"
512.  
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
513.  
Politics is like coaching a football team.  you have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
514.  
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
515.  
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
516.  
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff.
		-- Peter de Vries
517.  
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
		-- Su Tung-p'o
518.  
And this is a table ma'am.  What in essence it consists of is a
horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
columnar supports, which we call legs.  The tables in this laboratory,
ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
world.
		-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
519.  
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
520.  
Man, n.:
	An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
521.  
Do something unusual today.  Pay a bill.
522.  
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"
523.  
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
		-- Oscar Wilde
524.  
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
525.  
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
526.  
Predestination was doomed from the start.
527.  
Lie, n.:
	A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
528.  
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"
529.  
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
530.  
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable.
		-- John F. Kennedy
531.  
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
like.
		-- Abraham Lincoln
532.  
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
533.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
534.  
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
535.  
Commitment, n.:
	Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
536.  
Familiarity breeds attempt
537.  
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
538.  
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
		-- Aelius Donatus
539.  
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
540.  
What with chromodynamics and electroweak too
	Our Standardized Model should please even you,
Tho once you did say that of charm there was none
	It took courage to switch as to say Earth moves not Sun.
Yet your state of the union penultimate large
	Is the last known haunt of the Fractional Charge,
And as you surf in the hot tub with sourdough roll
	Please ponder the passing of your sole Monopole.
Your Olympics were fun, you should bring them all back
	For transsexual tennis or Anamalon Track,
But Hollywood movies remain sinfully crude
	Whether seen on the telly or Remotely Viewed.
Now fasten your sunbelts, for you've done it once more,
	You said it in Leipzig of the thing we adore,
That you've built an incredible crystalline sphere
	Whose German attendants spread trembling and fear
Of the death of our theory by Particle Zeta
	Which I'll bet is not there say your article, later.
		    -- Sheldon Glashow, Physics Today, Dec. 1984
541.  
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
542.  
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10 -- SIMPLE

SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment.  This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it.  The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP.  No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error.  Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful.  Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
543.  
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
		-- Ogden Nash
544.  
Q:	Why do ducks have flat feet?
A:	To stamp out forest fires.

Q:	Why do elephants have flat feet?
A:	To stamp out flaming ducks.
545.  
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
		-- John Kenneth Galbraith
546.  
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
547.  
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
		-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
548.  
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
549.  
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.
550.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
551.  
... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
		-- J. B. White
552.  
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals.  When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals.  But then again,
don't we all?
553.  
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
554.  
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.
555.  
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
556.  
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
557.  
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
		-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
558.  
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
Bible.  Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible.  He personally
examined every sheet as it came off the press.  Yet the published
Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
printed and pasted over them in every copy.  The result provoked wry
comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
559.  
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
		-- H. H. Williams
560.  
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"
561.  
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
562.  
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
563.  
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.  Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
		-- Clarence Darrow
564.  
I like being single.  I'm always there when I need me.
		-- Art Leo
565.  
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe.  For example, there are no
solids in the universe.  There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums.  There are no surfaces.  There are no
straight lines.
		-- R. Buckminster Fuller
566.  
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
567.  
Van Roy's Law:
	An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
568.  
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
		-- Samuel Goldwyn
569.  
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world.  Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
		-- Isaac Asimov
570.  
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
571.  
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
		-- Voltaire
572.  
There are two ways to write error-free programs.  Only the third one
works.
573.  
77.  HO HUM -- The Redundant

------- (7)	This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8)	boredom.  Your programs always bomb off.  Your wife
------- (7)	smells bad.  Your children have hives.  You are working
---O--- (6)	on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9)	the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER.  You give up hot dates
--- --- (8)	to nurse sick computers.  What you need now is sex.

Nine in the second place means:
	The yellow bird approaches the malt shop.  Misfortune.

Six in the third place means:
	In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
	Revenue Service.  Great Dragons!  Are you in trouble!
574.  
Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
		-- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
575.  
This fortune cookie program out of order.  For those in desperate need,
please use the program "randchar".  This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound.  It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
576.  
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
it."
		-- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
577.  
Justice, n.:
	A decision in your favor.
578.  
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
		-- Pope John Paul I
579.  
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
		-- E. W. Dijkstra
580.  
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
581.  
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
		-- The Wall Street Journal
582.  
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
583.  
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
584.  
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
		-- G. B. Shaw
585.  
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?"  Very earnestly, the
Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed
the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously
hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual.
The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
586.  
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
		-- Thomas Jefferson
587.  
First Rule of History:
	History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
	other.
588.  
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
it.
589.  
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
loop?
590.  
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.  It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
		-- D. J. Hicks
591.  
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
592.  
Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
593.  
Bacchus, n.:
	A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
594.  
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
595.  
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
596.  
	CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do much of
anything and are lazy.  There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
597.  
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
598.  
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
599.  
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope."
		-- Oscar Wilde
600.  
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
601.  
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
		-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
602.  
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
	You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
	bread to butter.
603.  
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
604.  
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
		-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
605.  
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.
606.  
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
substance.
		-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
607.  
History repeats itself.  That's one thing wrong with history.
608.  
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
609.  
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.
610.  
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
611.  
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
612.  
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:

"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
		-- Wolfgang Pauli
613.  
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.  They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
614.  
Don't tell any big lies today.  Small ones can be just as effective.
615.  
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
616.  
What I tell you three times is true.
617.  
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
618.  
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
619.  
		DETERIORATA

Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.

	You are a fluke of the universe ...
	You have no right to be here.
	Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
	Is laughing behind your back.
		-- National Lampoon
620.  
GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
	Good news and bad news highlighted.  Enjoy the good news while
	you can; the bad news will make you forget it.  You will enjoy
	praise and respect from those around you; everybody loves a
	sucker.  A short trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's
	room.
621.  
Don:	I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill!  Was she
	pretty?
W. C.:	Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
	bad road.  She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
	sleep with her head in a safe.  She died in Bolivia.
Don:	Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W. C.:	It's almost impossible.
		-- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
		   E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
622.  
	"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
		-- Ogden Nash
623.  
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them.  They last forever, largely because
nobody ever eats them.  In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.

The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet.  Be sure to wear
safety glasses.
		-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
624.  
I dread success.  To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship.  I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
		-- George Bernard Shaw
625.  
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
		-- H. Allen Smith
626.  
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.
627.  
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
628.  
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
629.  
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
		-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
630.  
Why does man kill?  He kills for food.  And not only food: frequently
there must be a beverage.
		-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
631.  
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
632.  
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
fascination.  When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
popular.
		-- Oscar Wilde
633.  
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
634.  
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.

It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
635.  
	"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
teenager asked her mother.
	"Encouragement, dear," she replied.
636.  
"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
637.  
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had
to be discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
		-- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
638.  
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
		-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
639.  
Every solution breeds new problems.
640.  
If anything can go wrong, it will.
641.  
Absurdity, n.:
	A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
642.  
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
	Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
	in kernel as it is in user!
643.  
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
644.  
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 ...
645.  
I like work ...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
646.  
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
		-- Ransom K. Ferm
647.  
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
648.  
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
649.  
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists.  Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects ...
650.  
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons".  Well, you can forget it.  If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight.  The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands.  So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program.  This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
		-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
651.  
A penny saved is ridiculous.
652.  
"Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"
653.  
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
	There are no answers, only cross references.
654.  
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
	Don't do it.

The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
	Don't do it yet.
		-- Michael Jackson
655.  
The revolution will not be televised.
656.  
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being N bytes.  At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
		-- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
657.  
Miss, n.:
	A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
658.  
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
659.  
		Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:

1.  None.  (Moses didn't have an ark).
2.  Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
3.  I don't know.
4.  Who cares?
5.  6 (or maybe 4, or else 3).  Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
    Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
6.  There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
    book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
    bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
    Papyrus Books).
660.  
"Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
		-- John Barrymore's dying words
661.  
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.
662.  
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
663.  
Barometer, n.:
	An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
are having.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
664.  
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.
665.  
For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
666.  
Brain, n.:
	The apparatus with which we think that we think.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
667.  
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.

This technique is used on equations with "n" in them.  Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

	We know it's true for n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than n.  N is arbitrary, so we can take n
as large as we want.  If n is sufficiently large, the case of n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important n are n less than n.  We
can take n = n (from above), so it's true for n+1 because it's just
about n.
	QED.	(QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
668.  
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.
669.  
"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical"
		-- Jon Carroll
670.  
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
671.  
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?
672.  
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
673.  
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
674.  
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"
675.  
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
676.  
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
		-- Dean Martin
677.  
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
678.  
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
679.  
Ducharme's Precept:
	Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
680.  
Lysistrata had a good idea.
681.  
Universe, n.:
	The problem.
682.  
Rhode's Law:
	When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
	circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
	empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied,
	inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically
	guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience,
	expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal
	comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above,
	be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
	adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally,
	immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes
	advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
683.  
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
		-- Disraeli
684.  
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
685.  
Do what comes naturally now.  Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
686.  
	"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all
sorts of marvelous things.  It's one thing to be able to say "I've got
a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
blessed.
		-- Randy Davis
687.  
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!
688.  
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
689.  
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)

	To code the impossible code,
	To bring up a virgin machine,
	To pop out of endless recursion,
	To grok what appears on the screen,

	To right the unrightable bug,
	To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
	To mount the unmountable magtape,
	To stop the unstoppable crash!
690.  
Fakir, n:
	A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
691.  
		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.
692.  
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
693.  
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back."
694.  
		     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 ...
695.  
Cerebus:	I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka:		Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus:	If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
		out of it?
Jaka:		Ugh!
Cerebus:	You don't like apricot brandy?
		-- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
696.  
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
		-- D. Gries
697.  
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining
position.
698.  
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
699.  
	A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
"That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
man".
	As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
700.  
		AMAZING BUT TRUE ...

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
701.  
I don't believe in astrology.  But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
		-- James R. F. Quirk
702.  
Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
		-- A. E. Newman
703.  
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!
704.  
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE

	Oh, dear, where can the matter be
	When it's converted to energy?
	There is a slight loss of parity.
	Johnny's so long at the fair.
705.  
	A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
eating his morning meal.  "I would like to give you this personality
test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
	Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
706.  
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
		-- S. C. Johnson
707.  
Please ignore previous fortune.
708.  
Economics, n.:
	Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
Galbraith ...
		-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
709.  
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
	Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
710.  
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch He wears
a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised
only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich
Protestant Golfer Magazine.  The advertisements are written in
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:

"The Rolex Hyperion.  An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship.  For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand.  Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold.  No watch
parts or anything.  Just a great big chunk on your wrist.  Truly a
timeless statement.  For the individual who is very secure.  Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school.  Because of his acne.  People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now.  Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion.  Hahahahahahahahaha."
		-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
711.  
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
		-- Marvin Minsky
712.  
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
713.  
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"
714.  
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
form of misery.
715.  
Heavy, adj.:
	Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
716.  
Police:	Good evening, are you the host?
Host:	No.
Police:	We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host:	About the drugs?
Police:	No.
Host:	About the guns, then?  Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police:	No, the noise.
Host:	Oh, the noise.  Well that makes sense because there are no guns
	or drugs here.  (An enormous explosion is heard in the
	background.)  Or fireworks.  Who's complaining about the noise?
	The neighbors?
Police:	No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago.  Most of the recent
	complaints have come from Pittsburgh.  Do you think you could
	ask the host to quiet things down?
Host:	No Problem.  (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
	religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
	room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
	lawn, where it smashes into a tree.  Eight guests tumble out
	onto the grass, moaning.)  See?  Things are starting to wind
	down.
717.  
Cold, adj.:
	When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
718.  
Baruch's Observation:
	If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
719.  
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
		-- Elliot, "E.T."
720.  
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
computer?  It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
721.  
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
		-- Mark Twain
722.  
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
723.  
BE ALERT!!!!  (The world needs more lerts ...)
724.  
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
		-- Albert Einstein
725.  
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan.  During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.

DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
	 having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural.  The simple fact of the matter
	 is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
	 large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
	 amounts of fertilization.
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute!  I do not want to go into that.  There are many
	 teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
726.  
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
727.  
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
728.  
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.  It just stops you
from enjoying it.
729.  
New York is real.  The rest is done with mirrors.
730.  
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.  Check
three friends.  If they're ok, you're it.
731.  
Williams and Holland's Law:
	If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
	statistical methods.
732.  
Ankh if you love Isis.
733.  
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.

	But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
	whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
		-- Matthew 5:37
734.  
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
	The system, you see,
	Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
735.  
"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
		--English Professor, Ohio University
736.  
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
737.  
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.  Buy the negatives at any
price.
738.  
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
		-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
739.  
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
		-- J. Finnegan, USC.
740.  
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
741.  
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
742.  
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
much sleep.
		-- Woody Allen
743.  
Ginsberg's Theorem:
	1.  You can't win.
	2.  You can't break even.
	3.  You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:

	Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
	meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
	Theorem.  To wit:

	1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
	2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
	    even.
	3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
	    game.
744.  
Truthful, adj.:
	Dumb and illiterate.
745.  
Ozman's Laws:
	1.  If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
	    won't.
	2.  The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
	    make.
	3.  People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
	4.  Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
746.  
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
	To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
	program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
	one, and convert to the next higher units.
747.  
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
		-- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
748.  
There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
started debating who should be allowed to stay.

The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth.  Then Mayor Daley
said, "Look!  We're not solving anything like this!  The only fair
thing to do is to vote on it."  So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
votes.
749.  
Quick!!  Act as if nothing has happened!
750.  
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."
751.  
"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
752.  
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
		-- Phil White
753.  
"One planet is all you get."
754.  
Accident, n.:
	A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
755.  
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
756.  
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
		-- Dykstra
757.  
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
		-- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
758.  
Every program has two purposes --
written and another for which it wasn't.
759.  
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
		-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
760.  
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?  Or what's
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
		-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
761.  
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12 -- LITHP

This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH".  LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
762.  
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know.
		-- Mark Twain
763.  
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
	Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.

	1. Little things start bothering you: little things like
	   worms, bugs, ants.
	2. Something is missing in your personal relationships.
	3. Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
	4. You have a hard time getting a waiter.
	5. Exotic birds flock around you.
	6. People ignore yo