General Wisdom

Timeless wisdom and witty observations

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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

Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.

Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you come back. Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago, when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot. Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made, and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed, although their insurance rates went way up.

— Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"

Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation): We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are, and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for.

Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.

World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced dress code!

Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are the shortest, though.

— Steve Rubenstein

Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.

— Steve Rubenstein

Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985: From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"

Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next year.

— Steve Rubenstein

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat

— Lewis Carrol

"Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"

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

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

— Frank Zappa

"Wrong," said Renner. "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"

X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot.

Xerox does it again and again and again and ...

Xerox never comes up with anything original.

XIIdigitation, n.: The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.

— S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together.

— Steve Higgins

"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."

Year, n.: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

— Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.

Yes, but which self do you want to be?

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

Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.

— Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Yinkel, n.: A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one will notice.

— Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.

"You are old, father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head -- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again."

— Lewis Carrol

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -- Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life."

— Lewis Carrol

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -- Pray what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box -- Allow me to sell you a couple?"

— Lewis Carrol

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

— Lewis Carrol

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

You are the only person to ever get this message.

You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of trash.

You buttered your bread, now lie in it.

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"

"You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on."

— Hepler, Systems Design 182

You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.

"You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them. Why do you find that funny?"

— D. Taylor, Computer Science 350

You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.

— Bumper Sticker

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

— Franklin P. Jones

You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN.

— Alan Perlis

You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

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

You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.

— Steven Feiner

You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

"You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename."

— Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454

You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

— Steven Wright

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

— Booker T. Washington

You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.

"You can't make a program without broken egos."

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.

— Lauren Bacall

"You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."

— Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and Over and Over"

"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't."

— Dagwood Bumstead

You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

— Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

You do not have mail.

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

— J. D. Salinger

You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles.

— Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food

You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.

You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More-- This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More-- You are permanently confused.

— Dave Decot

You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to metal objects which are not fastened down.

You have junk mail.

You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets wrinkled.

You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.

You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party and there aren't any.

You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel.

— Jim Ignatowski

You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.

— S. Rickly Christian

You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.

— Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82

You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.

You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.

"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!" "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen!"

— Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.

You may be recognized soon. Hide.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.

— Sydney Harris

You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him.

— Ed Howe

You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.

— Alfred Kahn

You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.

— Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"

You might have mail

"You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."

You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll be dead.

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

— Charles A. Beard

You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.

You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.

— J. Wellington Wells

You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

— Olin Miller.

You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially if they are dead.

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1.

— Ernest Rutherford

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.

— Henrik Ibsen

You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.

— Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"

You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit. In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids.

— Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"

"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"

— Business Professor, University of Georgia

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You too can wear a nose mitten.

You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.

You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.

You will be surprised by a loud noise.

You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.

You will feel hungry again in another hour.

You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door mayonnaise salesman.

You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.

— Sherlock Holmes

You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.

You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to worry.

You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.

— Groucho Marx

"You'll never be the man your mother was!"

You're at the end of the road again.

You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.

You're never too old to become younger.

— Mae West

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

— Dean Martin

You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!

You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.

"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."

— Gary Giddens

Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a thing he tells you.

Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you from enjoying it.

Your fault: core dumped

Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly. Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette table, etc.

— Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.

Your lucky color has faded.

Your lucky number has been disconnected.

Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.

Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.

"Yow! Am I having fun yet?"

— Zippy the Pinhead

YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!"

Zero Defects, n.: The result of shutting down a production line.

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad.

— William Shakespeare, "King John"

Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense.

PLAYGIRL, Inc. Philadelphia, Pa. 19369 Dear Sir: Your name has been submitted to us with your photo. I regret to inform you that we will be unable to use your body in our centerfold. On a scale of one to ten, your body was rated a minus two by a panel of women ranging in age from 60 to 75 years. We tried to assemble a panel in the age bracket of 25 to 35 years, but we could not get them to stop laughing long enough to reach a decision. Should the taste of the American woman ever change so drastically that bodies such as yours would be appropriate in our magazine, you will be notified by this office. Please, don't call us. Sympathetically, Amanda L. Smith p.s. We also want to commend you for your unusual pose. Were you wounded in the war, or do you ride your bike a lot?

FROM THE DESK OF Dorothy Gale Auntie Em: Hate you. Hate Kansas. Taking the dog. Dorothy

UNIX Trix For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea either. If you need some help, give us a call.

— CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems

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'll make sure it gets expunged.

It's grad exam time... COMPUTER SCIENCE Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150\% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.) MATHEMATICS If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Describe the Universe. Give three examples.

It's grad exam time... MEDICINE You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.) HISTORY Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. BIOLOGY Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.

Pittsburgh driver's test 10: Potholes are a) extremely dangerous. b) patriotic. c) the fault of the previous administration. d) all going to be fixed next summer. The correct answer is b. Potholes destroy unpatriotic, unamerican, imported cars, since the holes are larger than the cars. If you drive a big, patriotic, American car you have nothing to worry about.

Pittsburgh driver's test 2: A traffic light at an intersection changes from yellow to red, you should a) stop immediately. b) proceed slowly through the intersection. c) blow the horn. d) floor it. The correct answer is d. If you said c, you were almost right, so give yourself a half point.

Pittsburgh driver's test 3: When stopped at an intersection you should a) watch the traffic light for your lane. b) watch for pedestrians crossing the street. c) blow the horn. d) watch the traffic light for the intersecting street. The correct answer is d. You need to start as soon as the traffic light for the intersecting street turns yellow. Answer c is worth a half point.

Pittsburgh driver's test 4: Exhaust gas is a) beneficial. b) not harmful. c) toxic. d) a punk band. The correct answer is b. The meddling Washington eco-freak communist bureaucrats who say otherwise are liars. (Message to those who answered d. Go back to California where you came from. Your kind are not welcome here.)

Pittsburgh driver's test 5: Your car's horn is a vital piece of safety equipment. How often should you test it? a) once a year. b) once a month. c) once a day. d) once an hour. The correct answer is d. You should test your car's horn at least once every hour, and more often at night or in residential neighborhoods.

Pittsburgh driver's test 7: The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. a) One of the tail lights is broken. You should blow your horn to call the problem to the driver's attention. b) The driver is signaling a right turn. c) The driver is signaling a left turn. d) The driver is from out of town. The correct answer is d. Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns.

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, and you should ignore them completely.

Pittsburgh driver's test 9: Roads are salted in order to a) kill grass. b) melt snow. c) help the economy. d) prevent potholes. The correct answer is c. Road salting employs thousands of persons directly, and millions more indirectly, for example, salt miners and rustproofers. Most important, salting reduces the life spans of cars, thus stimulating the car and steel industries.

Has your family tried 'em? POWDERMILK BISCUITS Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious! They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. POWDERMILK BISCUITS Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains that indicate freshness.

Hard Copies and Chmod And everyone thinks computers are impersonal cold diskdrives hardware monitors user-hostile software of course they're only bits and bytes and characters and strings and files just some old textfiles from my old boyfriend telling me he loves me and he'll take care of me simply a discarded printout of a friend's directory deep intimate secrets and how he doesn't trust me couldn't hurt me more if they were scented in lavender or mould on personal stationery

— terri

`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit will be given to candidates who self-actualise. 1: Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why neither has street credibility. 2: "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner city. 3: Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked into a black hole. 4: "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult. 5: Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics. 6: "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing up of western dualism? 7: Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss.

OUTCONERR Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes Did logzerneg the ifthen block All kludgy were the function flows And subroutines adhoc. Beware the runtime-bug my friend squrooneg, the false goto Beware the infiniteloop And shun the inprectoo.

Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence 1. Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear bomb, use the stairs. 2. When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit the ground. 3. If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials. 4. Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to psychological problems. 5. Food will be scarce, you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc. 6. Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze, internal organs will be scarce in the post-nuclear age. 7. Try to be neat, fall only in designated piles. 8. Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas, people could be staggering illegally. 9. Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to one's, but more sanitary due to limited circulation. 10. Accumulate mannequins now, spare parts will be in short supply on D-Day.

The Split-Atom Blues Gimme Twinkies, gimme wine, Gimme jeans by Calvin Kline... But if you split those atoms fine, Mama keep 'em off those genes of mine! Gimme zits, take my dough, Gimme arsenic in my jelly roll... Call the devil and sell my soul, But Mama keep dem atoms whole!

— Milo Bloom

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 fortune. 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!

What I Did During My Fall Semester On the first day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the second day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. Then I hung out in front of the Dover. On the third day of my fall semester, I got up. Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic. I found a thesis topic: How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.

— Sister Mary Elephant, "Student Statement for Black Friday"

THE DAILY PLANET SUPERMAN SAVES DESSERT! Plans to "Eat it later"

*** STUDENT SUCCESSES *** Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine. Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate yourself in the morning.

... 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"

... with liberty and justice for all who can afford it.

7,140 pounds on the Sun 97 pounds on Mercury or Mars 255 pounds on Earth 232 pounds on Venus or Uranus 43 pounds on the Moon 648 pounds on Jupiter 275 pounds on Saturn 303 pounds on Neptune 13 pounds on Pluto

— How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places in the solar system.

A boy scout troop went on a hike. Crossing over a stream, one of the boys dropped his wallet into the water. Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed the wallet and tossed it to another carp. Then that carp passed it to another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back and forth. "Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case of carp-to-carp walleting."

A carpet installer decides to take a cigarette break after completing the installation in the first of several rooms he has to do. Finding them missing from his pocket he begins searching, only to notice a small lump in his recently completed carpet-installation. Not wanting to pull up all that work for a lousy pack of cigarettes he simply walks over and pounds the lump flat. Foregoing the break, he continues on to the other rooms to be carpeted. At the end of the day, while loading his tools into his truck, two events occur almost simultaneously: he spies his pack of cigarettes on the dashboard of the truck, and the lady of the house summons him imperiously: "Have you seen my parakeet?"

A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top when a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him. "Are you the foreman around here?" he asked timidly. "I'd like to join your circus; I have what I think is a pretty good act." The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top. Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping his arms furiously. Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles, performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time. "Well," puffed the little man. "What do you think?" "That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully. "Bird imitations?"

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'd listened carefully to all of this, then commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"

A farmer decides that his three sows should be bred, and contacts a buddy down the road, who owns several boars. They agree on a stud fee, and the farmer puts the sows in his pickup and takes them down the road to the boars. He leaves them all day, and when he picks them up that night, asks the man how he can tell if it "took" or not. The breeder replies that if, the next morning, the sows were grazing on grass, they were pregnant, but if they were rolling in the mud as usual, they probably weren't. Comes the morn, the sows are rolling in the mud as usual, so the farmer puts them in the truck and brings them back for a second full day of frolic. This continues for a week, since each morning the sows are rolling in the mud. Around the sixth day, the farmer wakes up and tells his wife, "I don't have the heart to look again. This is getting ridiculous. You check today." With that, the wife peeks out the bedroom window and starts to laugh. "What is it?" asks the farmer excitedly. "Are they grazing at last?" "Nope." replies his wife. "Two of them are jumping up and down in the back of your truck, and the other one is honking the horn!"

A father gave his teen-age daughter an untrained pedigreed pup for her birthday. An hour later, when wandered through the house, he found her looking at a puddle in the center of the kitchen. "My pup," she murmured sadly, "runneth over." Catching his children with their hands in the new, still wet, patio, the father spanked them. His wife asked, "Don't you love your children?" "In the abstract, yes, but not in the concrete."

A German, a Pole and a Czech left camp for a hike through the woods. After being reported missing a day or two later, rangers found two bears, one a male, one a female, looking suspiciously overstuffed. They killed the female, autopsied her, and sure enough, found the German and the Pole. "What do you think?" said the the first ranger. "The Czech is in the male," replied the second.

A group of soldiers being prepared for a practice landing on a tropical island were warned of the one danger the island held, a poisonous snake that could be readily identified by its alternating orange and black bands. They were instructed, should they find one of these snakes, to grab the tail end of the snake with one hand and slide the other hand up the body of the snake to the snake's head. Then, forcefully, bend the thumb above the snake's head downward to break the snake's spine. All went well for the landing, the charge up the beach, and the move into the jungle. At one foxhole site, two men were starting to dig and wondering what had happened to their partner. Suddenly he staggered out of the underbrush, uniform in shreds, covered with blood. He collapsed to the ground. His buddies were so shocked they could only blurt out, "What happened?" "I ran from the beachhead to the edge of the jungle, and, as I hit the ground, I saw an orange and black striped snake right in front of me. I grabbed its tail end with my left hand. I placed my right hand above my left hand. I held firmly with my left hand and slid my right hand up the body of the snake. When I reached the head of the snake I flicked my right thumb down to break the snake's spine... did you ever goose a tiger?"

A guy returns from a long trip to Europe, having left his beloved dog in his brother's care. The minute he's cleared customs, he calls up his brother and inquires after his pet. "Your dog's dead," replies his brother bluntly. The guy is devastated. "You know how much that dog meant to me," he moaned into the phone. "Couldn't you at least have thought of a nicer way of breaking the news? Couldn't you have said, `Well, you know, the dog got outside one day, and was crossing the street, and a car was speeding around a corner...' or something...? Why are you always so thoughtless?" "Look, I'm sorry," said his brother, "I guess I just didn't think." "Okay, okay, let's just put it behind us. How are you anyway? How's Mom?" His brother is silent a moment. "Uh," he stammers, "uh... Mom got outside one day..."

A guy walks into a pub and asks: "Does anyone here own a Doberman? I feel really bad about this, but my Chihuahua just killed it." A man leaps to his feet and replies, "Yes, I do, but how can that be? I raised that dog from a pup to be a vicious killer." "Yes, well, that's all well and good," replied the first, "but my dog's stuck in its throat."

A horse breeder has his young colts bottle-fed after they're three days old. He heard that a foal and his mummy are soon parted. A crow perched himself on a telephone wire. He was going to make a long-distance caw. A musical reviewer admitted he always praised the first show of a new theatrical season. "Who am I to stone the first cast?" A hard-luck actor who appeared in one coloossal disaster after another finally got a break, a broken leg to be exact. Someone pointed out that it's the first time the poor fellow's been in the same cast for more than a week.

A housewife, an accountant and a lawyer were asked to add 2 and 2. The housewife replied, "Four!". The accountant said, "It's either 3 or 4. Let me run those figures through my spread sheet one more time." The lawyer pulled the drapes, dimmed the lights and asked in a hushed voice, "How much do you want it to be?"

A lawyer named Strange was shopping for a tombstone. After he had made his selection, the stonecutter asked him what inscription he would like on it. "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer," responded the lawyer. "Sorry, but I can't do that," replied the stonecutter. "In this state, it's against the law to bury two people in the same grave. However, I could put ``here lies an honest lawyer'', if that would be okay." "But that won't let people know who it is" protested the lawyer. "Certainly will," retorted the stonecutter. "people will read it and exclaim, "That's Strange!"

A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimmie a whiskey." The bartender ignores him. "Hey bartender, gimmie a whiskey." Still ignored. "HEY BARMAN!! GIMMIE A WHISKEY!!" The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain. Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots, jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender, "I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw."

A man enters a pet shop, seeking to purchase a parrot. He points to a fine colorful bird and asks how much it costs. When he is told it costs 70,000 zlotys, he whistles in amazement and asks why it is so much. "Well, the bird is fluent in Italian and French and can recite the periodic table." He points to another bird and is told that it costs 90,000 zlotys because it speaks French and German, can knit and can curse in Latin. Finally the customer asks about a drab gray bird. "Ah," he is told, "that one is 150,000." "Why, what can it do?" he asks. "Well," says the shopkeeper, "to tell you the truth, he doesn't do anything, but the other birds call him Mr. Secretary."

— being told in Poland, 1987

A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student. "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new disciples." Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.

A man sank into the psychiatrist's couch and said, "I have a terrible problem, Doctor. I have a son at Harvard and another son at Princeton; I've just gifted each of them with a new Ferrari; I've got homes in Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, and a co-op in New York; and I've got a thriving ranch in Venezuela. My wife is a gorgeous young actress who considers my two mistresses to be her best friends." The psychiatrist looked at the patient, confused. "Did I miss something? It sounds to me like you have no problems at all." "But, Doctor, I only make $175 a week."

A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the bartender, "Do you serve lawyers here?". "Sure do," replied the bartender. "Good," said the man. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for my 'gator."

A man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path. A man pleaded innocent of any wrong doing when caught by the police during a raid at the home of a mobster, excusing himself by claiming that he was making a bolt for the door. A farm in the country side had several turkeys, it was known as the house of seven gobbles. A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his wife asked "What have you got there?" Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer." A women was in love with fourteen soldiers, it was clearly platoonic. Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills. Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."

A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer promptly replied. "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully, how long will it take?" The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said. "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete." The programmer agreed to this. Several years slated, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night.