Magazine Quotes

17th Rule of Friendship: A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount of life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is noncancellable.

— Esquire, May 1977

186,282 miles per second: It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!

18th Rule of Friendship: A friend will let you hold the ladder while he goes up on the roof to install your new aerial, which is the biggest son-of-a-bitch you ever saw.

— Esquire, May 1977

2180, U.S. History question: What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what office did he later hold?

667: The neighbor of the beast.

A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?

— Tom Galloway

A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.

A musician, an artist, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.

— William Blake

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.

Abbott's Admonitions: (1) If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know. (2) If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.

— Charles Abbot, dean, University of Virginia

Absent, adj.: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.

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

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Abstainer, n.: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Academy: A modern school where football is taught. Institute: An archaic school where football is not taught.

Acceptance testing: An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs.

Accident, n.: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better.

— Foolish Dictionary

Accordion, n.: A bagpipe with pleats.

Accuracy, n.: The vice of being right

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

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

ADA: 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.

— "Datamation", January 15, 1984

Adler's Distinction: Language is all that separates us from the lower animals, and from the bureaucrats.

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

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Adore, v.: To venerate expectantly.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Adult, n.: One old enough to know better.

Advertising Rule: In writing a patent-medicine advertisement, first convince the reader that he has the disease he is reading about; secondly, that it is curable.

Afternoon, n.: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning.

Age, n.: That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit.

— Ambrose Bierce

Agnes' Law: Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.

Air Force Inertia Axiom: Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness.

air, n.: A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Alaska: A prelude to "No."

Albrecht's Law: Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well-being.

Alden's Laws: (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause of pregnancy. (2) Always be backlit. (3) Sit down whenever possible.

algorithm, n.: Trendy dance for hip programmers.

alimony, n: Having an ex you can bank on.

All new: Parts not interchangeable with previous model.

Allen's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.

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

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Alone, adj.: In bad company.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Ambiguity: Telling the truth when you don't mean to.

Ambition, n: An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

— Ambrose Bierce

Amoebit: Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply and divide at the same time.

Andrea's Admonition: Never bestow profanity upon a driver who has wronged you. If you think his window is closed and he can't hear you, it isn't and he can.

Androphobia: Fear of men.

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it; get a larger hammer.

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.

Antonym, n.: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.

Aphasia: Loss of speech in social scientists when asked at parties, "But of what use is your research?"

aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement. afterism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.

— James Alexander Thom

Appendix: A portion of a book, for which nobody yet has discovered any use.

Applause, n: The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool.

— Ambrose Bierce

aquadextrous, adj.: Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Arbitrary systems, pl.n.: Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing general can be said."

Arithmetic: An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries.

Armadillo: To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle.

Armor's Axiom: Virtue is the failure to achieve vice.

Armstrong's Collection Law: If the check is truly in the mail, it is surely made out to someone else.

Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.

Arnold's Laws of Documentation: (1) If it should exist, it doesn't. (2) If it does exist, it's out of date. (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.

Arthur's Laws of Love: (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else. (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person.

ASCII: The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would become computer literate. Etymologically, the term has come down as a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall receive."

— Robb Russon

Atlanta: An entire city surrounded by an airport.

Auction: A gyp off the old block.

audophile, n: Someone who listens to the equipment instead of the music.

Authentic: Indubitably true, in somebody's opinion.

Automobile, n.: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.

Bachelor: A guy who is footloose and fiancee-free.

Bachelor: A man who chases women and never Mrs. one.

Backward conditioning: Putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.

Bagbiter: 1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS, CHOMPER, CHOMPING.

Bagdikian's Observation: Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele.

Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors.

Ballistophobia: Fear of bullets; Otophobia: Fear of opening one's eyes. Peccatophobia: Fear of sinning. Taphephobia: Fear of being buried alive. Sitophobia: Fear of food. Trichophobbia: Fear of hair. Vestiphobia: Fear of clothing.

Banacek's Eighteenth Polish Proverb: The hippo has no sting, but the wise man would rather be sat upon by the bee.

Banectomy, n.: The removal of bruises on a banana.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Barach's Rule: An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.

Barbara's Rules of Bitter Experience: (1) When you empty a drawer for his clothes and a shelf for his toiletries, the relationship ends. (2) When you finally buy pretty stationary to continue the correspondence, he stops writing.

Barker's Proof: Proofreading is more effective after publication.

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.

Baruch's Observation: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Basic Definitions of Science: If it's green or wiggles, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it doesn't work, it's physics.

BASIC, n.: A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.

Bathquake, n.: The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water faucet is turned on to a certain point.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Battle, n.: A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that will not yield to the tongue.

— Ambrose Bierce

Beauty, n.: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

— Ambrose Bierce

Beauty: What's in your eye when you have a bee in your hand.

Begathon, n.: A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so you won't have to watch commercials.

Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidical progression when he is already in the company of (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better-looking and richer male friend.

— R. Beifeld

belief, n: Something you do not believe.

Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: (1) Houses are for people to live in. (2) Gardens are for plants to live in. (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.

Benson's Dogma: ASCII is our god, and Unix is his profit.

Bershere's Formula for Failure: There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.

beta test, v: To voluntarily entrust one's data, one's livelihood and one's sanity to hardware or software intended to destroy all three. In earlier days, virgins were often selected to beta test volcanos.

Bierman's Laws of Contracts: (1) In any given document, you can't cover all the "what if's". (2) Lawyers stay in business resolving all the unresolved "what if's". (3) Every resolved "what if" creates two unresolved "what if's".

Bilbo's First Law: You cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.

Binary, adj.: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.

Bipolar, adj.: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo, New York.

birth, n: The first and direst of all disasters.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

bit, n: A unit of measure applied to color. Twenty-four-bit color refers to expensive $3 color as opposed to the cheaper 25 cent, or two-bit, color that use to be available a few years ago.

Bizoos, n.: The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a basketball.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

blithwapping: Using anything BUT a hammer to hammer a nail into the wall, such as shoes, lamp bases, doorstops, etc.

— "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends

Bloom's Seventh Law of Litigation: The judge's jokes are always funny.

Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.

Blutarsky's Axiom: Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason.

Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.

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

Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.

Booker's Law: An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

Bore, n.: A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.

— Walter Winchell

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

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

boss, n: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud."

Boucher's Observation: He who blows his own horn always plays the music several octaves higher than originally written.

Bower's Law: Talent goes where the action is.

Bowie's Theorem: If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.

boy, n: A noise with dirt on it.

Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"

brain, n: The apparatus with which we think that we think.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

brain, v: [as in "to brain"] To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

brain-damaged, generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Multics, adj: Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he/she should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is bad; it also implies it is unusable.

Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

briefcase, n: A trial where the jury gets together and forms a lynching party.

broad-mindedness, n: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.

Brogan's Constant: People tend to congregate in the back of the church and the front of the bus.

brokee, n: Someone who buys stocks on the advice of a broker.

Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when this occurs, they are an endangered species.

— Thomas K. Connellan

Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Bubble Memory, n.: A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".

Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.

— Ray Simard

bug, n: A son of a glitch.

bug, n: An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed.

— "Datamation", January 15, 1984

Bugs, pl. n.: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls.

Bumper sticker: All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture.

Bunker's Admonition: You cannot buy beer; you can only rent it.

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

— "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends

Bureau Termination, Law of: When a government bureau is scheduled to be phased out, the number of employees in that bureau will double within 12 months after the decision is made.

bureaucracy, n: A method for transforming energy into solid waste.

Bureaucrat, n.: A person who cuts red tape sideways.

— J. McCabe

bureaucrat, n: A politician who has tenure.

Burke's Postulates: Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about. Don't create a problem for which you do not have the answer.

Burn's Hog Weighing Method: (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank. (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.

— Robert Burns

buzzword, n: The fly in the ointment of computer literacy.

byob, v: Believing Your Own Bull

C, n: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.

— Ray Simard

Cabbage, n.: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Cache: A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no one is supposed to know is there.

Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.

Campbell's Law: Nature abhors a vacuous experimenter.

Canada Bill Jones's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Canada Bill Jones's Supplement: A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

Canonical, adj.: The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."

Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Carson's Consolation: Nothing is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example.

Carson's Observation on Footwear: If the shoe fits, buy the other one too.

Carswell's Corollary: Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature invariably comes up with a better mouse.

Cat, n.: Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.

cerebral atrophy, n: The phenomena which occurs as brain cells become weak and sick, and impair the brain's performance. An abundance of these "bad" cells can cause symptoms related to senility, apathy, depression, and overall poor academic performance. A certain small number of brain cells will deteriorate due to everday activity, but large amounts are weakened by intense mental effort and the assimilation of difficult concepts. Many college students become victims of this dread disorder due to poor habits such as overstudying. cerebral darwinism, n: The theory that the effects of cerebral atrophy can be reversed through the purging action of heavy alcohol consumption. Large amounts of alcohol cause many brain cells to perish due to oxygen deprivation. Through the process of natural selection, the weak and sick brain cells will die first, leaving only the healthy cells. This wonderful process leaves the imbiber with a healthier, more vibrant brain, and increases mental capacity. Thus, the devastating effects of cerebral atrophy are reversed, and academic performance actually increases beyond previous levels.

Chamberlain's Laws: (1) The big guys always win. (2) Everything tastes more or less like chicken.

character density, n.: The number of very weird people in the office.

Charity, n.: A thing that begins at home and usually stays there.

checkuary, n: The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his checks.

Chef, n.: Any cook who swears in French.

Cheit's Lament: If you help a friend in need, he is sure to remember you-- the next time he's in need.

Chemicals, n.: Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.

Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36: Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".

— Chicago Reader 3/27/81

Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84: The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will cheerfully baste you.

— Chicago Reader 5/28/82

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, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.

Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.

Christmas: A day set apart by some as a time for turkey, presents, cranberry salads, family get-togethers; for others, noted as having the best response time of the entire year.

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.

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

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Clarke's Conclusion: Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.

Clay's Conclusion: Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.

clone, n: 1. An exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone of their product." 2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their product is a clone of our product."

Clovis' Consideration of an Atmospheric Anomaly: The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated than by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere, bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.

COBOL: An exercise in Artificial Inelegance.

COBOL: Completely Over and Beyond reason Or Logic.

Cohen's Law: There is no bottom to worse.

Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Cold, adj.: When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own pockets.

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Collaboration, n.: A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the other fellow can spell.

College: The fountains of knowledge, where everyone goes to drink.

Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50\%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to. Grelb's Commentary: Likelihoods, however, are 90\% against you.

Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.

comment: A superfluous element of a source program included so the programmer can remember what the hell it was he was doing six months later. Only the weak-minded need them, according to those who think they aren't.

Commitment, n.: [The difference between involvement and] Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.

Committee, n.: A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

— Fred Allen

Commoner's three laws of ecology: (1) No action is without side-effects. (2) Nothing ever goes away. (3) There is no free lunch.

Complex system: One with real problems and imaginary profits.