%%
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
%%
November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
	And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
	And men were really obnoxious...
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.
%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.

However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours by
judging things by their price.
%%
"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 Carroll
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
    Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
    "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
    Allow me to sell you a couple?"
					-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life."
					-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"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 Carroll
%%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
%%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate
it.
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
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.
%%
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.
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
	Negative expectations yield negative results.
	Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Howe's Law:
    Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
	90% of everything is crud.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
	You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
	bread to butter.
%%
Paul's Law:
	You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
	When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
	most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Maier's Law:
    If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.

Corollaries:
    1.	The bigger the theory, the better.
    2.	The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the
	observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence
	with the theory.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
	If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
	statistical methods.
%%
Harvard Law:
    Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature,
    volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn
    well pleases.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
    There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
	Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
	themselves.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
	The number of people in any working group tends to increase
	regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
	If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
	bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
	People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
	Them that has, gets.
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
    Those who can -- do.
    Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension:
    Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Jone's Law:
    The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to
    blame it on.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
    No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
    That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or
subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have
gotten.
%%
Miksch's Law:
	If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Putt's Law:
    Technology is dominated by two types of people:
	Those who understand what they do not manage.
	Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
    Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its
    termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).
%%
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.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
	Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
	The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
	population is growing.
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
	Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
The Fifth Rule:
    You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
	A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
					-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.  I said I
didn't know.
					-- Mark Twain
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
					-- William Gilbert
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
	All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
	The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
	cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
	The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
	Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
	is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
	can never hope to acquire it.
%%
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
	Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
	Do I want one?	God Forbiddie!
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
					-- H. Allen Smith
%%
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.
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
	Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
	And I am not.
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
		-- A. E. Housman
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
					-- Ralph Emerson
%%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue,
a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to
the contrary, nohow.
%%
"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?!?"]
%%
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its
head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
					-- Samuel Foote
%%
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.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
	When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Rudin's Law:
	If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
	do it every time.
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
	The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
	amount of work already completed.
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
					-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
					-- Howard Kandel
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
					-- Henrick Ibson
%%
I like work...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I
believe everything positively stinks.
					-- Lew Col
%%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
					-- Dolph Sharp
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
					-- Ogden Nash
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny --
	Did you ever try buying then without money?
					-- Ogden Nash
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
a tempest of words.
					-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
"Hey!  Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
					-- W. C. Fields
%%
Who's on first?
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys..."
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
    I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
    I'm Salome, moon of the East.

Here in my soul I am Sappho;
    Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
    With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.

I'm all of the glamorous ladies
    At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
    So I stay at home with a book.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
    Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
    Still behold me at your side.

Say I'm neither brave nor young,
    Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
    Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
    And I get me another man!
					-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
					-- Dorothy Parker
%%
	INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
 ...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind.	The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
					-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
					-- Disraeli
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
					-- J. D. Salinger
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
					-- Alfred Kahn
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and
also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
			-- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
	Superiority is recessive.
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
					-- Winston Churchill
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
		-- Hilaire Belloc
%%
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.
%%
Famous last words:
    1. Don't worry, I can handle it.
    2. You and what army?
    3. If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop.
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
	Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
	in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light...

To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.
%%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
	You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
	You lie a great deal.  On the other hand, you are inclined to
	be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
	mistakes over and over again.  People think you are stupid.
%%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
	You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
	followed by the CIA or FBI.  You have minor influence over your
	associates and people resent your flaunting of your power.  You
	lack confidence and you are generally a coward.  Pisces people
	do terrible things to small animals.
%%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
	You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt.  You
	are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice.	You are
	not very nice.
%%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
	You are practical and persistent.  You have a dogged
	determination and work like hell.  Most people think you are
	stubborn and bull headed.  You are a Communist.
%%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
	You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
	problems.  They think you are a sucker.  You are always putting
	things off.  That's why you'll never make anything of
	yourself.  Most welfare recipients are Cancer people.
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
	You consider yourself a born leader.  Others think you are
	pushy.	Most Leo people are bullies.  You are vain and dislike
	honest criticism.  Your arrogance is disgusting.  Leo people
	are thieves.
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
	You are the logical type and hate disorder.  This nitpicking is
	sickening to your friends.  You are cold and unemotional and
	sometimes fall asleep while making love.  Virgos make good bus
	drivers.
%%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
	You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted.  You will
	achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
	ethics.  Most Scorpio people are murdered.
%%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
	You are optimistic and enthusiastic.  You have a reckless
	tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent.  The majority
	of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both.  People
	laugh at you a great deal.
%%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
	You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do
	much of anything and are lazy.	There has never been a
	Capricorn of any importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing
	still for too long as they take root and become trees.
%%
Insanity is hereditary.  You get it from your kids.
%%
	A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest.	In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
	The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created.  So God must have been an
architect."
	The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
					-- Mark Twain
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
					-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall.	Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well.  Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%%
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
					-- Walt Kelly
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
There's no future in time travel
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
"Really ??  What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
	-- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.  Check
three friends.	If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.	Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%%
USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
    Black.  Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and
    each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic
    underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle
    is solved.
%%
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.
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
					-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
%%
"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
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
					-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three.  One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.  I
hope I don't get run over again.
%%
Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%%
Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
	But this output can be
	No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
					-- Gigo
%%
Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
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.
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
		-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
					-- Mark Twain
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full.
					-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends.
					-- Herbert Hoover
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
		-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
					-- Woody Allen
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
					-- Joe Walsh
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
	Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
		     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...
%%
		      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
%%
Never try to out-stubborn a cat.
					-- Lazarus Long
%%
Space is big.  You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is.  I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
			-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
	They usually have virgins,
	And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Why be a man when you can be a success?
					-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
University: 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 ...
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."

How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."

How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%%
		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.
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
					-- Mark Twain
%%
Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss.
					-- Lazarus Long
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Go 'way!  You're bothering me!
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
		-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
Chicken Soup:
    An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine,
interferon, and TLC.  The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic
dependence on one's mother.
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
    There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that someone isn't
Jewish.  For example, you'll never meet a Jew named Johnson or Wright or Jones
or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or Larsen or Jenks.  But some
goyisha names just about guarantee that every other person you meet with that
name will be Jewish.  Why is this?
    Who knows?	Learned rabbis have pondered this question for centuries and
have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u can find one?  Get
serious.  You don't even understand why it's forbidden to eat crab -- fresh
cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster -- soft tender morsels of lobster
dipped in melted butter.  You don't even understand a simple thing like that,
and yet you hope to discover why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz?
Fat Chance.
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
    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
%%
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".

    Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the
harsh, staccato "go to sleep"?  Listen to the difference:
    "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious,
isn't it?
    Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking
Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you
live.  This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends,
business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's
just the point.  It has to start with committed individuals and then grow....
    Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs
written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is
written in Yiddish.  And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the
road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards.  But is that too
high a price to pay for world peace?  I think not, my friend, I think not.
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"

    Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end
of the 1980 election.  At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find
it anywhere.  I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why would he lie about
a thing like that?
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Goy: ...
    The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:

    "I'm Jewish.  Count Basie's Jewish.  Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's
goyish.  The B'nai Brith is goyish.  The Hadassah is Jewish.  Marine Corps --
heavy goyish, dangerous.
    "Kool-Aid is goyish.  All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is
Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes --
goyish.  Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are _v_e_r_y Jewish.  Fruit
salad is Jewish.  Lime Jell-O is goyish.  Lime soda is _v_e_r_y goyish.  Trailer
parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them..."
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
    One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?"  The generally accepted answer is "_s_o_m_e_b_o_d_y has to buy
retail."
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Half-done:
    This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference between this and the
typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the the difference between
life and death.
     You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there in
Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport, fly to New
York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown
F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your
first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees
left, and stop.  Say to the man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
    Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
    A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit.  The first thing
he notices is that the arms are too long.
    "No problem," says the tailor.  "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them
out in front of you.  See, now it's fine."
    "But the collar is up around my ears!"
    "It's nothing.  Just hunch your back up a little...no, a little more...
that's it."
    "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
    "Now, bend your knees a little to take up the slack.  There you go.  Look
in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
    So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street.  Reba and
Florence see him go by.
    "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
    "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
    Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile.	Murray
just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures.  One day, without
knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation.	In an instant,
armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison.
    They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports in
their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get them
to name their contacts in the liberation movement..  Finally they're hauled in
front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
    The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll be
shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have any
lasts requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in Chicago.
The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray.
    "This is crazy!" Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he spits in the
sergeants face.
    "Murray!" Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
					-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Shamus:
    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 synagogue 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!"
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
					-- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Good-bye.  I am leaving because I am bored.
				-- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Die?  I should say not, dear fellow.  No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
				-- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt:  Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how _n_o_t to.  So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Re graphics:  A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to
describe the picture.  Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
described with pictures.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs.  Only the third one
works.
%%
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.
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.  Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded:	That the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
Think of it!  With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse?  What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
					-- Kehlog Albran
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.

Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate.  It will depend upon how many flats they've
brought with them.

Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%%
	Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.

	He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the
Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an
open market.

	If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he
should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of
himself.

	Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
	Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
	Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
					-- Kehlog Albran
%%
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
%%
	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
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
					-- Kehlog Albran
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
					-- Dr. Who
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
					-- The Brigadier, from Dr. Who
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
		-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
					-- Alan Perlis
%%
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
					-- Alan Perlis
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
					-- Alan Perlis
%%
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
%%
"Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any
bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.'  Once
punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing
bazingas, and such."
					-- N. Meyrowitz
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
					-- Aelius Donatus
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
					-- Voltaire
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
					-- Voltaire
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
					-- Voltaire
%%
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!
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
					-- Trotsky
%%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
					-- Gore Vidal
%%
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.
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
		-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
	"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
		-- Ogden Nash
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
				-- Jules Feiffer
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable.  There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
				-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
					-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
					-- Werner von Braun
%%
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.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
		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
%%
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."
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
			-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
					-- Andrew Young
%%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
			-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
					-- J. Paul Getty
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
					-- Milton Friedman
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
					-- Pogo
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
			-- Walter Winchell
%%
I do not fear computers.  I fear the lack of them.
					-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
					-- Lily Tomlin
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
					-- Russell Long
%%
Yesterday I was a dog.	Today I'm a dog.  Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh!  There's so little hope for advancement.
					-- Snoopy
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
					-- Earl Wilson
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
					-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
					-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
		-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
				-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
					-- Eric Hoffer
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
				-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
		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.
%%
		AMAZING BUT TRUE...

There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
				-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
				-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

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

Yours faithfully,
	Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P.
	Sevenoaks
%%
Terullian 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).
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
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
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
					-- Frank Zappa
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
					-- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
	GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917

On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl.  He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!"  Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%%
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that
would be clearly understood.
					-- Alexander Haig
%%
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.
%%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
					-- Woody Allen
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM

If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene?  We cannot continue
without your support.  Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors.  That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride.  We
can't go on like this much longer.  Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m.  Don't let this happen.  Mail your fortunes right now to
`fortune'.  Just type in your favorite pithy saying.  Do it now before
you forget.  Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out.  All fortunes will be acknowledged.  If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide.  If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug....
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
SEMINARS:  From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion.
%%
POLITICIAN:  From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete'
("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face).
Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces.
					-- Martin Pitt
%%
ETYMOLOGY:  Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations
that were hard for the public to believe.  The term 'etymology' was
formed from the Latin 'etus' ("eaten"), the root 'mal' ("bad"), and
'logy' ("study of").  It meant  "the study of things that are hard to
swallow."
					-- Mike Kellen, Oakdale, Minnesota
%%
		Another Glitch in the Call
		------- ------ -- --- ----
	(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)

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

	Hey!  Hacker!  Leave those lists alone!

Chorus:
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
	All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat
					-- Lewis Carroll
%%
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.
%%
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...
				-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point B are so keen to get t_h_e_r_e_.  They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
				-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
	Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
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.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%%
Politics is like coaching a football team.  you have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever...and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack
in your sidewalk?
%%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%%
One way to stop a run away horse is to bet on him.
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and i'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else --
unless it is an enemy.
					-- A. Einstein
%%
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope.
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
					-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%%
	A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion.	"Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..."
	"If what?" asked the composer.
	"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%%
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity?  If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune.  But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity.
					-- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an excess
of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
					-- Samuel Johnson
%%
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
					-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
					-- Mark Twain
%%
"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
					-- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted
					   by a physicist colleague
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
	When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
	hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
	Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
	distributed.
%%
Meader's Law:
	Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
	everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Fourth Law of Revision:
    It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences --
    if you have none, someone will make one for you.
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
	Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
	bound to occur.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
	Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
	If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
	if he had lost his senses.  When he looks down, paraphrase the
	question back at him.
%%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
	Measure with a micrometer.  Mark with chalk.  Cut with an axe.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
	1) Never draw what you can copy.
	2) Never copy what you can trace.
	3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
    "All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
    Do these facts never fill you with shame?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
    "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
    Made it pointless to think any more."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
    Do you really think this is quite fair?"

"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
    "But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
    And to stop me it's now far too late."
%%
"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."
%%
"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!"
%%
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!
%%
	When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him.  You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem.	For better or worse you have acted decisively.
	In a way, the next move is up to him.
					-- R. A. Lafferty
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
					-- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
The Roman Rule
    The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is
    doing it.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
	Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
	held to discuss it.
%%
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.
%%
Grelb's Reminder:
    Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average
    drivers.
%%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
    You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
Rule of the Great:
    When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts,
    they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
    Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Goldenstern's Rules:
    1. Always hire a rich attorney
    2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
	There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
No obscene fortunes today
			-- The Management
%%
