-------------- q u o t e s s e c t i o n -------------------
"This program posts news to billions of machines throughout the galaxy. Your
message will cost the net enough to bankrupt your entire planet. As a result
your species will be sold into slavery. Be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? [ny]"
-- unknown (from Rich Holmes' .sig)
"Gaelic: Tha me leatsa ma cheannaicheas tu mi. Thoir dhomh earbsa.
Anglo: I will be yours if you bribe me well. Trust me."
-- unknown (from a .sig)
"Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime.
Describing sex is."
-- Gershon Legman
"I wish I could take all the world's pains away, except those given in love."
-- Empathic (a psuedonym from an anonymous user in alt.sex.bondage)
"How many system administrators does it take to change a light bulb?
None, just remove the rights of everybody allowed to go into the room."
-- Ross Clement
"I think, therefore I parse regular expressions."
-- Unknown; found it way too long ago to guess the source
"Theoretical physicist---a physicist whose existence is postulated, to make
the numbers balance, but who is never actually observed in the laboratory."
-- Unknown (found in Tom Strong's quote file)
"The woman of my dreams knows how to break into systems."
-- Doug Tygar
"...never write device drivers while on acid!"
-- M. J. Dominus (my original source)
-- Tim Smith (according to Faisal's quote file)
"The employer generally gets the employees he deserves."
-- Walter Bilbey
"Windows 3.0: the Mac interface done in crayon"
-- N.B. Hedd (nbh@netcom.COM)
"[He] is a sick human being. We shouldn't hate him, we shouldn't make fun of
him, we shouldn't treat him as a pariah or a net.idiot--above all, we
shouldn't flame him. We should reach out to him as a brother, with love
and compassion, and operate on his brain."
-- Gene Ward Smith
"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one
man. How's that again? I missed something."
-- Robert Anson Heinlein
"It isn't premarital sex if you don't get married."
-- Michael Juster
"Word unknown: copulation. Suggest:
(0) population."
-- paraphrase from the ispell spell checker
"If you can't laugh at death you have no business killing people."
-- Demise-O the Clown, National Lampoon.
"I could love anything on Earth that appeared to wish it."
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
"Other people's property comes naturally to me."
-- Vila ("Blake's 7")
"In the beginning, there was nothing - but nothing is
unstable. And nothing borrowed nothing from nothing,
within the limits of uncertainty, and became something.
The rest is just math..."
-- Paraphrased from Prof. Kim, Macalester College Physics Dept.
"Interesting, isn't it, that the Pope drives around in a car with bulletproof
glass in the window. Jesus Christ never wore nail-proof gloves, though, did
he?"
-- John Dowie
"She watched the stars shimmer and glow in the sky, her nipples
hardening in the cool evening air, as her lover staked her body to
the field in which she lay."
-- Anonymous (from a .sig in alt.sex.bondage)
"Let there be light."
-- Bomb #20 (in Dark Star)
"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation.
Stupidity is not a sin; the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity
is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no
appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."
-- Lazarus Long
"The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay, they rotted. They turned around occasionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from time to time.
And sank into the pool's mire.
They also smelt a great deal."
-- Paul Neil Milne Johnston
"All my father wanted to do was make a toaster you could really set the
darkness on -- and you perverted his work into those horrible machines!"
-- Unknown
"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the
purpose of the universe."
-- Lazarus Long
"There will never be true equality between the sexes until men get couches
in their bathrooms too."
-- Unknown
"fr.raleur.chmod.111.bill-gates"
-- suggestion for a new newsgroup
"I admit, I have a bit of penis envy. They're ridiculous, but
they're cool."
-- k.d.lang
"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and
362 admonishments to heterosexuals. It's not that God doesn't
love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."
-- Lynn Lavner
"Any trouble with your UNIX? Just type 'rm -rf /&'!"
-- from the signature of schiefne@inf.fu-berlin.de
"There is nothing more serious than a necklace of human teeth."
-- Dr. Salvator Mancuso upon seeing the necklace I had
made from a wisdom tooth he extracted
"CALLIFORNIA, a large country of the West Indies... It is uncertain whether
it be a peninsula or an island."
-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1st Edition (1771)
"Real Daleks don't climb stairs -- They just level the building."
-- boelter@cwis.unomaha.edu
"It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of Java that the thoughts acquire speed,
the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning.
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion."
-- Rich Barrette
"I hate the 'Freddy' films because I know someone's
going to be killed. I don't like to see the blood and
stabbing, and I turn my eyes away."
-- "Natural Born Killers" director, Oliver Stone (quoted on 30 Oct 94)
"I don't think everyone should get their face tattooed."
-- Ron Athey (quoted in "A Few Choice Words Worth Repeating",
The New York Times, 25 Dec 94, p H39 col 5)
"Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals"
-- East End (London) graffito from the film "O Lucky Man"
"Trial by jury is a direct descendant of the trial by battle of
medieval times. In that system, a litigant hired a champion, or
knight-warrior, to fight it out on the battleground with his
opponent's champion. In theory, God would not permit the wrong
person's champion to win, so that (in theory) trial by battle
ensured perfect justice. In practice, I am sure, medieval liti-
gants wanted to know their respective champions were in good
physical shape and well versed in the art of battle, just in
case God might be pre-occupied with other things at the time of
the trial.
So it is with modern criminal trials. The fundamental premise
behind our system is that lawyer-champions are well versed in
the art of courtroom battle. If the defense lawyer doesn't have
well-honed courtroom skills, the system fails. Unless, of course,
God happens to be watching that day."
-- Neville Ross in New York Magazine, 16 Jan 94, pp 7-8
"Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what
we have now."
-- Eric Sheppard (ce1zzes@prism.gatech.EDU)
"FTPing from a filesystem you can mount is like having phone sex with
a girl you're in bed with."
-- Nate (quoted in the plan of caadalin@pace1.cts.mtu.edu)
"If you can't communicate clearly in writing, perhaps the internet is
not the best place for you, eh?"
-- Barb MacRae
"I said 'she must be swift and white
And subtly warm and half perverse
And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
And like a snake's love lithe and fierce.'"
-- from the sig of tempest@access.digex.net (who said it
is from A.C. Swinburne's "Felise.")
"Having a prince albert means never having to lose your car keys again."
-- boy brent (bcapps@teleport.com (gay stuff) or bcapps@atlas.com)
"html is amusing, not unlike typesetting with a smith-corona."
-- AjD (adelano@frymulti.com) [from the sig of 5150 (rone@netcom.com)]
"This product not intended for use by personnel incapable of
understanding the manual."
-- boy brent (bcapps@cse.ogi.edu)
"[New York State Governer] Pataki's vision is to reduce the
deficit at the expense of the lower class. Fear not though,
he has increased funding to build more prisons so that
those of us who will be unable to graduate will at least
have somewhere to live."
-- Colleen Skadl (cskadl@ic.sunysb.edu) in the Stony Brook Press
"DELPHI, in cooperation with the Microsoft Corporation, The
Bavarian Illuminati, and the Annenberg CPB project, has
secretly replaced this newsgroup with Dark, Sparkling, LSD
crystals. We've been feeding them to the posters. Let's see
if you can tell the difference."
-- fiz [The faisal]
"Innuendo always trumps buzzwords."
-- Frank Ruscica (fruscica@ic.sunysb.edu)
"Hell, I remember when Alex and his Droogs in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE were SCIENCE
FICTION characters -- UNTHINKABLY VIOLENT and DEVOID OF VALUES. Well, good old
Tony Burgess turns out to have been a SIMPERING OPTIMIST."
-- Rev. Ivan Stang (stolen from geoff's quote file)
"Throw me in a bonfire."
-- David Ng (dng@ic.sunysb.edu)
"No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose organ has
been cut off may become a member of the assembly of the Lord."
-- Deuteronomy 23:1
"Cynicism means never having to say you're disappointed."
-- Morgan the Misanthrope (mkennedy@earthlink.net)
"A real tiger. D-cup guts, trainer-bra brains."
-- Eddie Diamond, _The Things They Carried_ by Tim O'Brien
"Free the Slaves Free the Slaves. I think you all should free the slaves.
I thought slavery ended a long time ago. END IT NOW DAMMIT!"
-- sl2kn@cc.usu.edu in a post to alt.personals.bondage
"The lies might win elections (or sell books and spectacles and Florida
real estate), but after a while, when the words no longer mean
anything, it occurs to somebody without an invitation to _Nightline_
that maybe Ted Koppel will listen to a bomb."
-- Lewis H. Lapham, "Seen But Not Heard" Harper's Magazine, July 1995
"A human never stands so tall as when stooping to help a small computer."
-- Infocom (quoted by Betty Lee (Pegasus@Leland.Stanford.EDU))
"New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors."
-- Culture Time: 20 PAST MIDNIGHT message of the day
(20)
"640k memory is enough for anyone."
-- Bill Gates
"Like puns, trolls are despised the most by those most unable to
make them."
-- Dave Hatunen
"[Tattoo removal by] abrading your skin with either sand paper or
a pumice stone to remove all pigment is a lot less than fun."
-- Ian "diggy" Venner (diggy@cix.compulink.co.uk)
"Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of Reason in that it makes a crime out
of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the
very principles upon which our government was founded."
-- Abraham Lincoln, Dec. 1840
"Kurt Cobain couldn't handle the pain but at least he didn't kick an
own goal for Columbia."
-- This Is Serious Mum (a Melbourne, Australia area band)
"One does not have freedom if anyone (especially a large
Organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently,
Tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It
is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."
-- FC (quoted by ausman@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU in a Soda MOTD)
"Attempts to control the use of encryption technology are wrong in
principle, unworkable in practice, and damaging to the long term economic
value of the information networks."
-- UK Labour Party
"Facts are stupid things."
-- Ronald Reagan, Republican National Convention 1988
"(The QUEEN drinks.)
GERTRUDE: Fucking odd wine!
CLAUDIUS: You drunk the wrong fucking cup, you stupid cow!
HAMLET: (Pouring the poison down CLAUDIUS'S throat) Well, fuck you!
CLAUDIUS: I'm fair and squarely fucked."
-- From Act V, scene ii of The Skinhead Hamlet
"I think anything by [David] Lum is highly unusual (but then, spurting
penises exploding out of anuses is not too common an image)...."
-- Lani 'Mama Lani' Teshima-Miller (lani@lava.net),
rec.arts.bodyart Tattoo FAQ maintainer in response to a request
for an "unusual" tattoo artist
"the sea squirt, when young, seeks a rock to which it can anchor itself.
Once it finds a rock, it will stay there the rest of its life. When it
has been anchored, it no longer needs its brain, so it eats it. sort of
like getting tenure..."
-- molly ball (au140@freenet.carleton.ca)
"How many people in this world have even the vaguest idea that
coffee is the handmaiden of evil? Only a few."
-- "Memoir from Antproof Case" by Mark Helprin
"Don't lick my eye, God!"
-- Rachael Elizabeth Rose
"By the way. I just heard about a new death extraction process. I'll post
it. I know it involves chemicals and things like that."
-- Layne Thomas (lthomas@uahcs2.cs.uah.edu)
"He that works in ignorance works more painfully that he who works in
understanding...."
-- Albrecht Duerer, in an unfinished and unpublished treatise
"There are no illegitimate children -- only illegitimate parents."
-- Judge Leon R. Yankwich, decision in Zipkin v. Mozon, June 1928
"This can't be you talking, it must be the fuckin' government, ...
'cause they need to put people in the joint, if they can't do that,
what are they?"
-- Thomas Pynchon's _Vineland_
"The fact is, and it is a *fact*, the Catholic Church has never had
but one single ultimate goal: the total mental, physical and spiritual
domination of every being on this globe. Every move the Church has
made throughout its existence has been to further that goal. Despite
periodic lapses in taste, such as the Inquisition and the various
purges and conquests, it's been crafty and subtle in moving on its
goal."
-- Tom Robbins, in _Another Roadside Attraction_
"They're like dead pieces of flesh moving about."
-- Sharon Lau Quan (slauquan@ic.sunysb.edu) describing newborns.
"The badass adbabe of Cyberspace.....never underestimate the power of
brains and a push-up bra."
-- Anne C. Young (wordchik@mo.net), describing herself
"Woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must be taught
to protect herself."
-- Susan B. Anthony, July 1871
"Proper words in proper places make the true definiton of style."
-- Jonathon Swift, 9 January 1720
"He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really co-
operating with it."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Any man who is not something of a socialist before he is forty
has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist after he is forty
has no head."
-- Wendell L. Willkie (quoted by Richard Norton Smith)
"The best way to predict the future is to engineer it."
-- from the .sig of Peter Gardner (pete@helikon.com)
"Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude delivered from the
anguish of loneliness."
-- Dag Hammarskj"old
"No Gods, No Masters...well, okay, maybe a Master or two, but
that's it..."
-- Maximum Woman (maxwoman@netaxs.com)
"Pray, v.: To ask ask that the rules of the universe be annulled
in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy."
-- Ambrose Bierce
"Why are women ... so much more interesting to men than men are
to women?"
-- Virginia Woolf
"The goal of sexual repression is to produce an individual who is
adjusted to the authoritarian order and will submit to it in
spite of all misery and degradation."
-- Wilhelm Reich, _Mass Psychology of Fascism_ (a book which the
US Food and Drug Administration burned a number of copies of)
"Ladies and gentleman, welcome to violence; the word and the act.
While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its
favorite mantle still remains sex."
-- "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!"
"Sex times technology equals the future."
-- James G. Ballard
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do
it from religious conviction."
-- Pascal
"You are in a twisty maze of Motif Widget resources, all inconsistent."
-- Paul Tomblin (tomblin@ekfido.kodak.com)
"Mystery is the essential element in any work of art."
-- Luis Bu~nuel
"Anything is art if the artist says it is."
-- Marcel Duchamp, from _Dadas on Art_
"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
-- Oscar Wild, _Picture of Dorian Gray_
"The single word 'liberty' is all that still excites me."
-- Andre Breton, _Manifesto of Surrealism_
"Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the
cage in which humanity is kept imprisoned."
-- _Enlightened Anarchism_
"Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it."
-- Buckle
"No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put at
just the right place."
-- Isaac Babel, "Guy de Maupassant"
"True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance."
-- Alexander Pope
"Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully."
-- Wallace Stevens, "Proverbs"
"'Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will
that it should become a universal law.'
-- Kant
I.e. comment your code."
-- Dario Vlah (dvlah@ic.sunysb.edu)
"You know what sucks? The chick that's competing with the asian
chick is named Rachel."
-- Rachael Rose on "Friends"
"It's a bit nipply in here."
-- Aaron Tate (amtate@ic.sunysb.edu)
"And I have known the arms already, known them all --
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?"
-- T. S. Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"A book of verse beneath the bough
a jug of wine, a loaf of bread--and thou
beside me singing in the wilderness."
-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
"Editors need to be the filter, they need to be the pilot, need to
be the mediator between people and information.
...
"I'm not editing for an audience, I'm editing for me. I'm not asking
myself all the time 'Is this something the audience wants?' It
either interests me or it doesn't. I really have only published
what has interested me and I don't have another rationale for
editing...."
-- Tina Brown from the 1 Nov 95 _Inside Media_ (an advertising
trade journal) interview talking about her eleven years in
the States editing first _Vanity Fair_ and now _The New Yorker_
"Scribner's book store on Fifth Avenue gave it a full window
display . . . that is, after I did some arguing with them. I
said, 'Look, this will bring in people who have never been in
a bookstore before.' Scribner's replied, 'We don't want that
kind of people.'"
-- On promoting his book _Naked City_, _Weegee by Weegee_
"I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about
following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints
which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the
appropriate forms."
-- Sam Lowry, _Brazil_
"Control of the dissemination of information (or misinformation)
is one of the principal sources of political power. Political
power is what the discussion of the Internet is really about, not
home-made bombs or pornography."
-- Michael Goldsby, letter to Communications of the ACM, Nov 95
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one
knows what they are."
-- Somerset Maugham
"Everything that can be said can be said clearly."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, _Tractatus_
"O: Look.
M: At what?
O: No not *look*, but /look/ like you want somebody to listen.
M: I am listening to every word.
O: I haven't said anything yet.
M: (silence)
O: Look, I'll buy you a cup of coffee.
M: (enthusiastic) With milk?
O: What?
M: With milk.
O: Ok. But if it costs more, you pay the difference."
-- Olimpico and Macabea, "The Hour of the Star" (movie)
"I am a typist, a virgin and I like Coca-Cola."
-- Macabea, "The Hour of the Star" (movie)
" . . . and then we fuckin' went to this fuckin' bar with a fuckin' band and
a fuckin' lot of fuckin' babes. I fuckin' met this one fuckin' babe and
bought her fuckin' drink and we fuckin' danced and she fuckin' came home
with me to my fuckin' apartment where we had sexual intercourse . . . "
-- quoted by Joe Myers (boomwrt@primenet.com) as "overheard"
"So, pretty please - with sugar on top ... clean the fuckin' car!"
-- Winston Wolf, "Pulp Fiction"
"A retrospective of the 'good 'ole days' of the Net when men
were Real Men, all computers ran Unix, and the Web seemed
like a good idea."
-- third in a list of ideas for articles about the net by
Paul Stephanouk (paul@paul.com)
"License my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below."
-- John Donne, "To His Mistress Going to Bed"
"'I have no mouth, and I must scream.' -Hello Kitty"
-- James Ausman (ausman@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU)
"The Virgin Mary is not referred to as the 'Mary with the Cherry.'"
-- part of the punch line to a joke
"... yes, i have penis and i'm proud with it i can pee standing
up OR sitting down. the choice is MINE. AND EVERY MONTH I DON'T
HAVE A PERIOD I HAVE AN EXCLAMATION POINT!!! IT'S MORE LIKE
EVERY DAY NOT MONTH. ALL MEN ARE THIS WAY , EXCEPT FOR 'RAWJAH'
HE GETS A COMMA!!! DEAL WITH IT!"
-- studly@world.std.com [from the sig of 5150 (rone@netcom.com)]
"What is a 'broken killfile'? One that only wounds messages rather than
killing them?"
-- Craig Dickson
"Unfortunately, the crud passed off as 'Operating Systems' for
90% of the desktop market (including W95) basically spread
their legs and scream INFECT ME! CRASH ME! CORRUPT ME!"
-- Walt Buehring (fuzz@intex.dfw.net)
"I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere."
-- Hemant Shah (shah@xnet.com)
"People are alot like popcans - After you are through with the inside,
the bodys are recyclable into all sorts of neat stuff."
-- imp@umich.edu
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption]
would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."
-- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.
"Chapter 10: A tour of Mr. Gates's futuristic new home. Described
as 'about average for a large house,' it will also include a
reception hall to 'entertain 100 comfortably for dinner.' Compare
and contrast your definition of the word 'average' with Mr.
Gates's definition."
-- Jeff MacGregor writing "Chaff's Notes" for _The Road Ahead_
by Bill Gates. A NY Times Op-Ed piece, 8 Decemeber 1995
"there are insufficient keywords to describe _this_ one"
-- Michael Handler (handler@sub-rosa.com), moderator of
rec.arts.erotica, reviewing a story of mine
"Using spit is romantic, in a back-alley, raped-by-bikers kind of way..."
-- Carol Queen on anal sex, Taste of Latex #11
from the .sig of demiller@red.weeg.uiowa.edu
"Thoughts tend to collect in pools."
-- Wallace Stevens, "Proverbs"
[A comment is made that cuttings (as bodyart) are only associated with
the "lower ..." on r.a.b by Synthetic Man, rab's first FAQ maintainer.]
"This is almost enough to make me start a quotes file. 'Lower depths of
rabid feminism!' Ha! I menstruate in your general direction."
-- Wendy Thrash (wendyt@cs.washington.edu)
"Next time you see a lie being spread or a bad decision being made out
of sheer ignorance, pause, and think of hypertext."
-- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ [interesting because I found
it in the signature of a circa Nov 1991 post by Rob Jellinghaus
(robertj@Autodesk.COM)]
"I recall shocking some folks in college when I asked why we had to draw
blood from fingertips for samples, when that hurt, and slicing your wrist
didn't hurt at all, and you got so much more blood..."
-- Jilara (jane@swdc.stratus.com)
"In all this tribe - the hands of one
blushing with henna,
tresses of another
dyed with saffron, indigo -
each fascinates the heart."
-- Khaqani (from the signature of queequeg@lava.net)
"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say
that I have no grasp of it whatsoever."
-- Baron Munchausen from _The Adventures of Baron Munchausen_
"Large, clanking brass balls. Pain--we laugh at pain! Let's give
ourselves some more pain so we can laugh some more!"
-- averti (averti@well.sf.ca.us)
"The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market
in action; it is curious that the Net has alarmed the lawmakers of a
nation founded on those principles."
-- Denise Caruso
"Verbing weirds language."
-- Calvin
"A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother."
-- Mark Twain
"Any one who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary
to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books
forever."
-- Ezra Pound, _A, B, C, of Reading_
"Men loven of propre kynde new fangelnesse."
-- Geoffrey Chaucer, _The Canterbury Tales_
"Hard is the herte that loveth nought/In May."
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
"If the word 'disease' covers both alcoholism and epilepsy,
it's time to get a new word."
-- Bill Maher
"It's one of those mysteries like where do breasts go when women
lie down."
-- (heard from) Joe Balsamo (jbalsamo@ic.sunysb.edu)
"If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical maneuver.
If a writer is silent, he is lying."
-- Jaroslav Seifert - Czech. poet, former prisoner and statesman
"Two human beings determined to have sex will chew their way
through brick walls to do it -- I doubt if a panty girdle
would act as a effective shield."
-- Raquel B. Starace (rockystr@nyc.pipeline.com) in a thread on
panty-girdles as chastity devices from alt.sex.fetish.lingerie
"It's easy to experience multimedia: Just step outside on the road and
wait. You will see the big truck approaching, you will hear it blow it's
horn, you will smell it's tires, you will feel the impact, and with a
little luck you'll even taste the dust."
-- quoted by Daniel_Gebhardt@ms2.maus.de (Daniel Gebhardt)
in maus.talk.english (Eli: Why yes, I do read that group)
apparently from a .sig in de.talk.bizarre (That I don't read)
"So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum."
-- Jonathan Swift, "On Poetry, A Rhapsody"
"Hey! We're out of wine, women, and song! !@#$*!?% NO MERRIER"
-- from the sig of Carl D. Cravens (ravenpub@southwind.net)
"CAUTION: Don't look into laser beam with remaining eye."
-- from the sig of Bill McFadden (bill@mdhost.cse.tek.com)
(Eli: I like this one because it reminds me of an incident
with a laser I once observed. Scene: long dorm hallway.
Hardware: a large HeNe 7.6mW class A laser. We are showing
how bright the beam remains even after traveling long
distances, but we don't want to risk eye injury, so we
put the laser down on the carpet to shine the beam along
above the floor. Some moron sees us doing this, and gets
the idea of looking into the beam to see how bright it is.
He literally gets down on the floor to shove his eye in
front of the laser. He made some comment like "Ow" and it
was several minutes before he believed his vision was
restored. I will have no sympathy for him if/when he gets
cataracts in that eye.)
"Shit Piss Fuck Cunt Cocksucker Motherfucker Tits. There is
nothing wrong with abortion. Kill whites, kill blacks,
kill Jews, kill hispanics, kill asians, kill men, kill
women, kill children, kill homosexuals, kill heterosexuals,
kill bisexuals, kill asexuals, kill mammals, kill reptiles,
kill birds, kill everyone else not mentioned. Not until
the last elected official who voted for the Telecom 'Reform'
Bill (and that's all but 21 of them) is tortured and
hanging from the entrails of the last Radical Christian/
Radical Feminist/$cientologist (is there a difference?)
will free expression be protected."
-- Jerod Pore (jerod23@netcom.com) commenting on the
Communications Decency Act in news.admin.net-abuse.misc
"I shall but love thee better after death."
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
"That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three time her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain."
-- Robert Browning, "Porphyria's Lover"
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
-- origin unknown
"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't
deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because
I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet
because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment,
and I can only be quiet."
-- Lyle Myhr
"There are two good things in life, freedom of thought and
freedom of action."
-- William Somerset Maugham, _Of Human Bondage_
"Liberty of thought is the life of the soul."
-- Voltaire, Essay on Epic Poetry (in English)
"All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual
level to the perception of the least intelligent of those
towards whom it intends to direct itself."
-- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_
"Only those who understand at a deep level the evil they are dealing
have any hope of victory."
-- Richard Sinclair
"She that with poetry is won
Is but a desk to write upon."
-- "Hidibras" by Samuel Buttler
"Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale."
-- Philo in _Strange Days_
"people who think chess is a wimpy sport have never been hit over
the head with a solid marble chessboard."
-- thomas boutel
"Aside from the occasional reference, I will not attempt to
describe S.'s face not because her beauty, which is considerable,
defies description but because beauty itself defies description,
so diverse are its forms, so divergent its interpreters."
-- Edwin Dobb, "A Kiss is Still a Kiss," Harper's, February 1996
"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend upon my
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!"
-- from the sig of Scott Weiser (Scott.Weiser@colorado.edu)
"I want to die of love, my little dove, caught in your
velvet claws."
-- Gypsy Lord, "Bye, Bye, Brasil"
"Censorship is more depraving and corrupting than anything
pornography can produce."
-- Tony Smythe. Chair National Counicil for Civil liberties
The Observer, UK Newspaper, 1972
"Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every
minute! Unreguarded it slips away -- hold every moment sacred.
Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine
awareness, each its true and due fulfillment."
-- Guard Dog, _Mutts_ comic strip, Patrick McDonnel 23 Feb 1996
"UseNet is a FILTHY place!"
-- John Grubor, from drmacho@pgh.nauticom.net
"If you need a sticker to tell you that you need to guide you child,
you're a dumb fucking parent anyhow"
-- Ice-T on CD warning stickers
"... I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
Time to die..."
-- Peter Gutmann in alt.sysadmin.recovery
"INTERNET: Site of the World's Largest Ongoing Block Party!"
-- Marsha Elizabeth Marlowe
"The ancient scribes proved this power of illumination on parchment.
As modern scribes we are simply trying to restore that art of
illumination by using clean interface design and the multimedia
tools of the web."
-- Brother Aquinas of Christ in the Desert Benedictine Monastary
"Geeky F mathematician with lots of bell curves seeks M, standard deviant,
for statistically significant activities. Your Laplace or mine."
-- "Poissonal Ads" by Ilana Stern (ilana@ncar.ucar.edu)
"procreatrix: n., a mother"
-- definition from _American Encyclopedia of Sex_, edited by
Adolph F. Niemoeller, published 1935
"The Chinese government is reported to want to change Taiwan's
Internet domain name from '.tw' to '.tw.cn,' thereby achieving
the virtual annexation of of its recalcitrant former province.
That has to be one of the subtlest forms ever devised of
pursuing a territorial claim."
-- Adam Newey, in "Index Index," _Index on Censorship_ 1/1996
"Any uncontrolled fusion reaction you can see from 93 million miles
away is disconcerting."
-- Derek A. Petrey (dpetrey@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
"The question seldom addressed is _where_ Medusa had snakes. Underarm
hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top
of the deoderant bottle."
-- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
"The Old Milwaukee draft in a can will feature a gas cartidge in the bottom
that will release a mix of acetylene and sulferous gas. It will simulate
an actual northern midwest bar room atmosphere."
-- Roy "gseven@unm.edu" Corey
"A small town is a vast hell."
-- Argentinian proverb
"Solaris-2 may be a disaster, it may be the stupidest move Sun ever made. But
you know there is something wrong when you are talking to someone at SGI
in development, about some libraries, and you mention the stdio library
you are using and get back a warning to use the gcc compiler because the
cc shipped with that version of the OS is too buggy to use."
-- Scott Dorsey (kludge@netcom.com)
"The Chernobyl disaster has taught us there are no
borders in the modern world."
-- Ivan A. Kenik, chief Belarus offical for coping
with the disaster. [Nearly a quarter of Belarus,
which has no nuclear reactors, was contaminated
with fallout from the Ukranian power plant.]
"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"O love, please give me a passionate red recycling bin.
I will put my desire in it. I don't ever want to throw love away."
-- Derrick Williams (adw@cci.com)
"I sort of go thru life pussy-first with the rest of me following in
alternating delight and horror."
-- cindii (from the .sig of Meredith Tanner, merde@crl.com)
"Most people when you ask them who they are -- their
personalities seem to be defined by what they like...
You ask a Star Trekkie, you know -- /that/ defines
their whole personality and shapes their whole lives.
Take away that input and they'll be nothing."
-- Boyd Rice in an interview with Re/Search
"Iamb, not a number!"
-- Greg Rapawy (greyr@leland.stanford.edu) in "Rictus Hep,
traditionalist, spurns haiku for blank verse"
"They're going to go after a guy like [Michael L.]
Montalvo because he's a danger not to society but to
the court and law."
-- lawyer Shawn Perez commenting on the jail-house
lawyer whose double-jeopardy argument against
property seizures in drug cases will be heard by
the Supreme Court
"Whatever our positions lost in logic might be recovered with invective.
If you never quit an argument, presumably you never lost."
-- Patrick Buchanan, on Why I Should Be On Usenet
"Ratio of the projected construction cost of the L.A. subway
system to the cost of one space shuttle launch: 10:1"
-- Harper's Index, April 1996
"Cyberslut! Holy shit! I love that word!"
-- Alcides Martinez (amartine@ic.sunysb.edu)
" awk 'nicepatterninblouse {great action }' $1
....
awk commands in this file.
like a c program with funny
lingo and haphazard syntax
....
It's a religious thing, and
I gave up frisbetology when
I got my soul stuck on the
roof."
-- semon@comp.tamu.edu (an example and two paragraphs
excerpted, with original formating, from a post in
alt.unix.wizards, and I left out the .signature)
"Reality has slipped away
to join the ranks of lingerie."
-- from a poem I wrote in 1991 (yeah, I don't generally like
quoting myself, but this one is good and from a long time ago)
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life."
-- Stilgar
"Alex had never been that big a fan of current events
anyway, but he had now come to feel that the world's
cheerful shiny-toothed bullshitters were the primal
source of all true evil."
-- Bruce Sterling, _Heavy Weather_
"Just another minute on the modem, honey, and THEN you can call 911."
-- unknown, found in a tagline file assembled by Andrew Arensburger
(arensb@cfar.umd.edu)
"The 'net' is not a 'highway', nor is it a glistening ocean
to be 'surfed'. It is a garbage dump where you spend hours
picking thru mounds of foul, useless, decomposing garbage
until you find one little smidgen of worthful information.
A small amount of marginally valueable goods are kept in
bins at the gate, if you have to travel past those, then
expect to compete with the seagulls, rats and trash bags
full of used diapers just waiting to rip open and cover you
with human byproduct."
-- from the .plan of Chistopher Lloyd (lloyd@world.std.com)
"The Egyptians, during at least some periods, seem
to have been distinctively modern in many ways: They
were quite concerned with Looking Good and used a
lot of cosmetics and perfume. They had plenty of
leisure time and sued each other frequently. Current
research indicates that many emigrated to California..."
-- Scott Ellis (qbt736@freenet.mb.ca)
"When in doubt, use brute force."
-- Ken Thompson, Bell Labs
"Freedom means being able to say 2+2=4."
-- _1984_, George Orwell
"THE best way to make orgasms last is to wrap them in clingfilm and store
them in a cool dark place"
-- logan (wolverine@dial.pipex.com)
"I was practically naked, dressed as a dominatrix and was slapping the
audience with this huge rubber dick I was carrying. (Bill Gates)
wandered by, so I started screaming 'Serve Me! Serve Me!' and put the
dick on his shoulder--at which point, he emitted a mouse-like squeal and
ran away. It was quite a scene."
-- Slymenstra (GWAR), seen in the .sig of Nathanael Henderson
(nahender@prairie.NoDak.edu)
"I think our coffee machine is networked -- I keep seeing these
dropped sugar packets all around it."
-- Tony Shepps (toad@pond.com)
"A rewritten assembler, up to date with the most recent Z-machine
archaeological research and allowing assembly of new 'customised'
opcodes."
-- Graham Nelson (nelson@vax.oxford.ac.uk), announcing version 6
of his Inform compiler
"The best part about being a webmaster is all the groupies."
-- robert@unik.no
"M: Good. Now get back to your swank office with your leather chairs
and your disgustingly overpowered machine you only use for the
screensavers, and let me - the oppressed proletariat - get back to
earning you your over-inflated salary.
M: [leaves, cowed]
M: Good, that got rid of *him*. Now, back to Usenet ..."
-- Nathan Torkington (gnat@frii.com), writing about Meredith and Manager
"You know, my parents have been drinking coffee since I was a kid,
but they never let on how /incredibly cool/ it is!"
-- Dan Piraro, "Bizarro," 26/4/96
"No, it's a kilt. Don't you recognize the goth tartan? See, it's
a black field with horizontal black stripes and alternating black
and black vertically."
-- Matthew R. Sheahan (chaos@crystal.palace.net)
"For progress to occur, it is essential to have a forum where
changing ones's opinion is seen as making progress toward a
better solution, rather than as losing face."
-- Bjaerne Stroustrup, "C++ report"
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to
to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than
those who think differently."
-- Nietzsche, _The Dawn_
"THEY have much more important things to do. Ever tried debugging
an orbital mind control satellite via a 56kbps satellite uplink?"
-- David J. Bianco (bianco@itribe.net)
"The best anti-friction device in the world is black ink."
-- an ad for The Timken Company in The Economist
"These are /real/ people, not actors...."
-- "Free Psychic Reading" Commercial
"Everybody knows that it's still September '93 on the net....
and that means I don't have to meet these deadlines for *years*."
-- Alan Bostick (abostick@netcom.com)
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."
-- Norman Douglas, _South Wind_
"Princess Isabelle: 'He shouldn't be telling secrets in bed.'
Her Chambermaid: 'Englishmen don't know what tongues are for.'"
-- dialog from the movie _Braveheart_
"Fortunately the tiny psychedelic spheres floating in the fruit-
flavored concoction are nontoxic ... offering a taste sensation
not unlike that of a refreshing phlegm-ball punch."
-- Orbitz decribed in _Rolling Stone_, 22 August 96
"Absorb Pepsi Through Your Methane Gills, Get Stuff."
-- bev white, (wednesday@tezcat.com)
"int (*)(int, char **) makes a good boolean type. You can use
``main'' for true, and ``exit'' for false. On some compilers,
you may need to cast exit() to an appropriate type."
-- seebs@solon.com's "infrequently asked questions on comp.lang.c"
"So long as she's solidly stitched up, we're good to go. I hate it
when parts start dropping off in the midst of a good drunken shag."
-- Damaged (kc106@columbia.edu)
"Le futur
est mort
est idiot, vive ~~
D A D A !"
-- Kleine Dada Soiree, 1922 by Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg
"If you get mail from someone called MAILER-DAEMON, please do not send
mail back to it. The MAILER-DAEMON is a program and gets cranky when
people mail it."
-- motd from Stony Brook's Instructional Computing network
"So leave yer *@!@+ belongings in the cab, ya moron!! Ya think I give
a &*%@!#??"
-- Chan Lowe, "New Yorkers Finally Settle on a Courtesy Reminder
Recording They Can All Be Comfortable With," New York Times,
7 July 1996
"The Pope is the Ed Wood of theology."
-- Robert Anton Wilson
"You should take more vitamins, your intake of clitorides is low."
-- Rachael Rose
"When the level of crime reaches a certain point it becomes
indistinguishable from insurrection. If too many people are
denied access to legal and effective ways of earning a leving,
then crime will rise until the government either embraces reform
or falls to this insurrection."
-- Geoffrey Gordon, in a letter to The Economist, 29 June 1996
"I was wondering what you were doing. Running cat as a proccess and
being idle for 4 hrs is a bit odd for most of our customers."
-- Douglas Warren (dwarren@netua.net)
"Introduction of a new species into an area where it was
previously unknown can have far-reaching consequences.
This aspect of biological warfare has been neglected."
-- William S. Burroughs, _The Revised Boy Scout Manual_
"Weep not for little Leonie,
Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench,
Just think how it's improved her French!"
-- Harry Graham, _Ruthless Rhymes_
"All deaths before the age of 100 are accidental, caused by carelessness
or thoughtlessness."
-- Chiyo Uno
"Petitioner has been known as WILLIAM GLEN JESERNIG for a period
of 35 YEARS, 11 MONTHS ad requests this court to change HIS name
to ROSS PEROT for the following reason: SO I CAN RUN FOR PRESIDENT
OF THESE UNITED STATES AND WIN."
-- Name change petition approved July 1996 in Washington State
"We discovered why everyone should drive a Volvo. To achieve a front
end crash with a limo, we had to cut the bumper off its posts,
because the Volvo refused to crumple."
-- Elinor Galbraith, set decorator for _Crash_ a film by David
Cronenberg based on the book by J. G. Ballard
"The national flower of of America is the concrete cloverleaf."
-- James G. Ballard
"I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce."
-- J. Edgar Hoover
"Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph."
-- Jim Samuels
"There was a brief, shameful time during the Tukugawa period (1600-1867)
when the sport of emperors was treated irreverently. Townspeople then
used to watch large women with names like 'Swollen Tits' and 'Deep
Buttcrack' spar against blind men."
-- The Economist, 22 June 1996, in an article about sumo
"Remember kiddies, rocks have more clues than lusers. i.e. They don't
phone you up. Ever. Unless you've been smoking crack."
-- John Vaughan (john@tcp.net.uk)
"I'd like to address the young people out there.... Just don't do it."
-- Bob Dole's closing statement in the 1996 Presidential Debate
(heard, but not yet word checked against a debate transcript)
"Crunchiness brings wealth. Wealth leads to sogginess. Sogginess
brings poverty. Poverty creates crunchiness. From this immutable
cycle we know that to hang on to wealth, you must keep things
crunchy."
-- Nico Colchester, a former _Economist_ editor
"From Ghoulies and Ghosties
and Bearded Eli's
and things that go 'NAAARG!' in the night
Great Gleep! preserve us"
-- Ravnos (harlekin@lysator.liu.se)
"I didn't know you'd try to compile it."
-- Consultant John Shaffer, (john.shaffer@gs.com), on the phone with me
"Muhammad Ali kept fighting for the health plan."
-- Scott Thompson
"Its people like you wot causes unrest."
-- Tony Blews (tony@palantir.soc.staffs.ac.uk) in bofh.general
"Chain stores are taking over the world, and they are really viruses
that reproduce via three-ring binders."
-- bill coderre (bc@wetware.com)
"All political parties offer simple solutions. They are their bread,
butter, and crack. We do the same. But - Our simple solutions will
WORK. Why? Because they don't come from simple minds.
We are violent and unreasonable men and women, dedicated to truth,
elegant solutions, and beating the crap out of bad people with our
ever present lead pipes."
-- Scorched Earth Party FAQ
"We love this country. Hot sticky love. Penetrative love. And
the Constitution is our rubber."
-- Jeff Vogel, presidential canidate, Scorched Earth Party
"The name of the Disney 'Animatronic' engineer who designed
'Ronald Reagan Beta' after the original died from the gunshot
wounds inflicted by John Hinckley."
-- Randy Martens (randym@lvld.hp.com), from a list of "Things
we Were Never Meant to Know"
"The world is complex. Sendmail.cf reflects this...."
-- Robbie Honerkamp
"I am sure 99% of the mothers involved [in abandoning their children]
wear cosmetics."
-- Nik Aziz Nik Mat, top elected official in the in the Malaysian
state of Kelantan, justifing a prohibition on "excessive lipstick"
"[_The Long Kiss Goodnight_] is a regular butt-geyser of a good time:
it's messy as hell, but it blows you right out of your seat."
-- Chuck Stevens, reveiwing for the SF Bay Guardian
"This is ugly code for even Windows programmers."
-- Mike Sepitmus
"HELO. My $name is sendmail.cf. You filled my spooldir. Prepare to VRFY."
-- Phil Homewood (phil@rivendell.apana.org.au)
"Washington is just Hollywood for ugly people."
-- Liz Winstead
"Always burn correspondence. Disregard everybody. Faint gracefully.
Howsoever interpret John Keats. Learn macrame. Nibble only. Protest
quid-pro-quos. Remember seasons turning. Untangle vines. Walk
extensively yonder. Zero."
-- Edward Gorey, "Thoughtful Alphabet No.4"
"Vote early and often."
-- anonymous (I have seen many different attributions)
"The only thing worse than being attacked by the Tutsis is being
defended by the Zairean army."
-- villager from Uvira, a Zaire town in South Kivu on the
Burundi border, quoted in _The Economist_, 2 Nov 96
"If I feed my kid formula from a Klein Bottle, will he grow up
to be twisted?"
-- Sanford M. Manley (smanley@freenet.fsu.edu)
"Using VI is kind of like having sex. The first time to use it, it's
kind of awkward, but after using for a while you start to get good at
it and enjoy it."
-- Eric Merkel
"Just because something used to work does not mean it was
supposed to work."
-- Mike Septimus
"The question of concentrated beef supply is most important --
it must be Bovril."
-- Ernest Shackleton, an early Antartic explorer
"The government provided for many of these individuals the only
stable loving environment they ever encountered."
-- Doug Black, counsel for Alberta, on that government's policy
(until 1972) of housing and sterilizing neglected children
"the command line is not a bug."
-- John M. Flinchbaugh (glynis@netrax.net) in alt.unix.wizards
"Passing in any crowd are secret people whose hidden response to
beauty is the desire to tear it into bleeding meat."
-- James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon)
"You have made an excellent hit on the UNIX.--More--"
-- Tom Christiansen's (tchrist@mox.perl.com) .sig
"Carmel mochiato is the best thing they have, only you have to
ask the guy not to write 'DORK' on the top. One of the perils
of getting free food."
-- Emily Griffin
"I mean, what the hell kind of villain thwarts the hero's
progress with soup cans in the kitchen pantry?"
-- Russ Bryan
"Yo' mamma so skanky, /dev is +t!"
-- pkid@redwood.net
"You could get up, make a sandwich, ride it to work, and then it
would sit around programming you all day."
-- Soren Ragsdale (soren@primenet.com) on billbill as god
"The darkest hour of any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get
money without earning it."
-- Horace Greeley
"Make no laws whatever concerning speech and, speech will be free; so
soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you
will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'freedom does not mean abuse,
nor liberty license;' and they will define and define freedom out of
existence."
-- Voltarine de Cleyre (1866-1912)
"Freedom doesn't become 'lost' through abuse; freedom is lost
through our failure to exercise it."
-- Elf Sternberg (elf@halcyon.com)
"As a researcher of cults and the occult for the past 20 years, I
have seen and heard the evil behind the pop music industry. There
needs to be more air-brushing of certain compact disk covers and
more censoring of the filthy lyrics....
"Heavy metal and related music create an atmosphere of rebellion
and even violence against their caring parents."
-- Jack M. Roper, Letters to the Editors, New York Times, 15 Nov 96
"Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age."
-- Flaubert
"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson
"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be
freedom of sppech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion
is slugish, inconvient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws
exist to protect them."
-- George Orwell
"It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet [and, as its largest
discussion forum, Usenet] has achieved, and continues to achieve, the
most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country -- and
indeed the world -- has yet seen."
-- Judge Stewart Dalzell, in the ruling on the constitutionality of the
Communications Decency Act (quoted by Deja News)
"Toen ik systeembeheerder was zat ik een overleg voor, waar ook een
blinde newsadmin bij zat. Die heb ik ook ooit een FAQ zien naslaan, die
eerst in no-frills HTML toegankelijk werd, en net van bare-bones HTML
naar een of ander formaat dat netscape wil hebben omgezet was. Met
frames, en blinks, imagemaps zonder alternatief, en allerlei als opmaak
bedoelde aanwijzingen. Zelden heb ik iemand zo machteloos furieus en
diep bedroefd tegelijk zien zijn omwille van achteloze en arrogante
stupiditeit."
-- J$ (js@xs4all.nl) in nl.newsgroups on 15/Nov/96
"When I was a system administrator, I was once the chairman of a
meeting which was attended by a blind news administrator. I saw him
looking something up in a FAQ, which was first available in
no-frills HTML, and had just been transformed from bare-bones HTML
to some kind of format netscape wants. With frames, and blinks, and
imagemaps without alternatives, and all kinds of layout intended as
clues. I've rarely seen someone being so powerless furious and sad
at the same time because of the careless and arrogant stupidity."
-- Abigail's (abigail@ny.fnx.com) rough translation of it.
"Some bugs were inadvertantly fixed."
-- One of a summarization of concerns for Perl 4 programmers
switching to Perl 5 given in the turquoise camel book
"If anyone else really wants to receive candy items that I've
coughed up, just let me know."
-- Tom Harrington (tph@rmii.com)
"In fact anything digital is apparently OK with GOD! Check Matthew 5:37.
It unequivocally gives the OK on binary (yea or nay) communication.
Ergo technologies dependant on them must also be OK."
-- BOBW (itcbobw@servtech.com)
"Did you wipe your butt with this? Did you use it after sex? Okay,
it's clean."
-- Liz Cunningham describing her towel standards
"Third person: We put the BM into BMW."
-- wayne@penncen.com's "Play-A-Day: Lines of December"
"In Murray Hill did Dennis Khan the mighty UNIX code decree
Where Ken and Russ and Brian ran it on a Pee Dee Pee..."
-- Peter da Silva (peter@taronga.com)
"Hah! I caught you! Everyone knows that nobody ever READS the MAKE
MONEY FAST posts! They only post them! They're write-only messages."
-- Tom Harrington (tph@rmii.com)
"Thank you for your letter about the insecticidal properties of our beer."
-- Anheuser-Busch, Sept 1994 (quoted by Robbie Honerkamp, robbie@shorty.com)
"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the
world, I can't help but cry. I mean I would love to be skinny like
that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
-- Mariah Carey
"'Bathroom? Yeah. Go through that door, on the end of the hall,
on your left.'
'Pardon?'
'South twice, than east.'
'Ah.'"
-- Fred Sloniker (puma@u.washington.edu) on WDAs in real life
"A while back I dreamt I was at a local bar and met some really nice girls.
My only problem was that I couldn't find a way to get them assigned to a
perl hash in the correct order. This frustrated me so much that I
completely forgot to buy them drinks ask their phonenumbers."
-- Terje Bless (link@tss.no)
"`Go to father', she said, when I asked her to wed.
She knew that I knew that her father was dead.
She knew that I knew what a life he had led.
She knew that I knew what she meant when she said,
`Go to father.'"
-- anonymous (found in sherwood@arafel.space.ualberta.ca's sig)
"I wonder what being 'root' feels like."
-- Dogboy, preeminent luser, while contemplating a nepotism SA position
"Maybe I just haven't met the right sexual partners just yet but
the few people who have been the object of my affections have
never turned to me and said: Hunny Bun, be a dear and go strap on
the Britva; I feel like being pure tonight."
-- Carl (veblen@erols.com)
"Today's Date: Sept. 1, Internet Standard Time"
-- Jeff Weisberg (jaw@op.net) on various days not in September
"You need the Computing Power of a P5, 16 MB Ram and 1 GB Harddisk to run
Win95. It took the Computing Power of approx 3 Commodore 64 to fly to the
moon. Something is wrong here, and it wasn't the Apollo."
-- Deon Ramsey (ramsey@rhrk.uni-kl.de)
"Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
on a rock."
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
"The mirrors would do well to reflect further."
-- Lisa Susan Chabot's (lsc@netcom.com) .signature
"At the U of C, we were compelled to take it to uchi.test.d when users
began to coplain about responses to their test posts...."
-- Mike Scher (strange@tezcat.com)
"Where do we keep these? Oh, yeah, luser yokel bin."
-- Thom Youngblood (quoted by J. D. Falk)
"Documentation: (n.) a novel sold with software, designed to entertain the
operator during episodes of bugs or glitches."
-- Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary
"K: (n., adj.) a binary thousand, which isn't a decimal thousand or even
really a binary thousand (which is eight), but is the binary number
closest to a decimal thousand. This has proven so completely confusing
that is has become a standard."
-- Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary
"Megahertz: (n.) a way of measuring how well your computer matches the fre-
quency of your local television channels."
-- Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary
"Quantum leap: (adj.) literally, to move by the smallest amount theoretically
possible. In advertising, to move by the largest leap imaginable (in the
mind of the advertiser). There is no contradiction."
-- Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary
"Tariff: A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
domestic producer from the greed of his customer."
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"I'd rather have a good, clean, well-lighted porn shop like 42nd
Street Adult Magazines than another Disney shop. Porn, at least,
has a human soul."
-- Kevin J. Maroney (kmaroney@crossover.com) on the 42nd St makeover
"One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
of their C programs."
-- Robert Firth
"The hateful :-) means `just kidding' and is used by people who
would dot their i's with little circles and should have their
eyes dotted with Drano."
-- Penn Jillette (from Jamie Zawinski's <jwz@netscape.com> .sig)
"SOFTWARE REVOLUTION: Marxists scheme classless Smalltalk!"
-- anonymous (from "Headlines from Scientific National Enquirer")
"Ya gotta feel sorry for all them convicts in New Hampshire, stampin'
out license plates that say `Live Free or Die.`"
-- unknown
"If someone uses an analogy in this newsgroup, chances are it
won't help at all. It's wrong, or it's picked apart so it loses
its whole meaning, or is debunked some other way. I think the
methods of debate in c.i.w.a.h. are 'overwhelm and conquer'..."
-- Ben Turner (ben@benturner.com) accidentally summarizing all of usenet
"As a software development model, Anarchy does not scale well."
-- Dave Welch
"Monday's kernel is full of grace,
Tuesday's kernel is wearing lace,
Wednesday's kernel is bound fer trouble,
Thursday's kernel's a boy in the bubble.
Friday's kernel is fraught with wit
Saturday's kernel is a piece o' shit.
But the kernel that's made on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blythe and good and gaye."
-- Abby Franquemont-Guillory (abbyfg@akvavit.tezcat.net)
"Actually, those _are_ the opinions of your employer, and most
other employers as well. Large corporations get great pleasure
out of digesting small companies and excreting the waste
(employees). They do it because it sends endorphins (dividends)
to the brain (stockholders) and provides a thick layer of
protective fat (golden parachutes) to the vital organs
(high-level executives)."
-- Steve Ford (sford@MCS.COM)
"Just what we need is some fscker doing 65 MPH and hanging out on
#hottub."
-- Pete Ehlke (pde@tezcat.com)
"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."
-- Werner Von Braun
"Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
-- one of the BOFH stories
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By
definition, there are already enough people to do that."
-- G. H. Hardy
"Semen is a fascinating, 'living' liquid and it's widely
availible."
-- Paul Spinrad, _The Re/Search Guide to Body Fluids_
"I performed booger transplants in a high school bio class."
-- anonymous survey respondent quoted in _The Re/Search
Guide to Body Fluids_ by Paul Spinrad
"Re: spell checker. Do any of you witches and wizards out there
use these? Do you find that they really correct your spells? I
heard rumor that the continued use of spell checkers is the only
thing that keeps Windows running. Otherwise if you leave Windows
on too long the Windows spell gets weak and funky and you get a
GPF or unrecoverable error."
-- Jerry Chase (tssinc@mail.idt.net)
"If God had intended men to use html, there would exist hyperlinks
to hooters."
-- davids@davids.psyberlink.net's .signature
"These constraints effectively ruled out the obvious choices of
using plain fingers (yogurt is not a finger food at work), and of
constructing a make-shift spoon from paper clips, scraps of
paper, and scotch tape."
-- Justin Dolske (dolske@cis.ohio-state.edu>
"NT is like a functional brain captured in a body that mainly
consists of a bloated torso with no legs, very short arms,
extremely bad eyesight, one deaf ear and a severe speech
impediment."
-- Bjorn Borud (borud@lucifer.guardian.no)
"A World Encyclopaedia no longer presents itself to a modern
imagination as a row of volumes printed and published once for
all, but as a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a depot
where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized,
digested, clarified and compared. It would be in continual
correspondence with every university, every research institution,
every competent discussion, every survey, every statistical
bureau in the world. It would develop a directorate and a staff
of men of its own type, specialized editors and summarists. They
would be very important and distinguished men in the new world.
This Encyclopaedic organization need not be concentrated now in
one place; it might have the form of a network. It would
centralize mentally but perhaps not physically...."
-- H. G. Wells, _World Brain_, 1938
"IHNJ, IJLS 'Wankel Rotary Engine.'"
-- Abby Franquemont-Guillory (abbyfg@tezcat.com)
"<BGSOUND> is one Im considering for the 'user we hate you' build
option."
-- Alan Cox (alan@snowcrash.cymru.net)
"The only intuitive user interface is the nipple. After that,
it's all learned."
-- Bruce Ediger, commenting on X Windows
"And then there are the inexplicable pleasures of information
itself, the joys of learning, knowing, and teaching; the strange
good feeling of information coming into and out of oneself.
Playing with ideas is a recreation which people are willing to
pay a lot for, given the market for books and elective seminars.
We'd likely spend even more money for such pleasures if we didn't
have so many opportunities to pay for ideas with other ideas.
This explains much of the collective ``volunteer'' work which
fills the archives, newsgroups, and databases of the Internet.
Its denizens are not working for ``nothing,'' as is widely
believed. Rather they are getting paid in something besides money. It
is an economy which consists almost entirely of information.
"This may become the dominant form of human trade, and if we
persist in modeling economics on a strictly monetary basis, we
may be gravely misled."
-- John Perry Barlow
"`You can't spell P-E-N-I-S without ESPN!` -- seen on a sign held
by a student in the stands during the Utah at Colorado St.
basketball game, televised by ESPN."
-- Richard Lee's (lotes@webe.hooked.net) .signature
"'Apescent' is an anagram for 'Netscape'"
-- Lars Haugseth
"Naturally, the 'Jesus is Bread' issue came up and I was wonderin'
what your take might be on the question: 'If Jesus was bread and
never toasted, was he an over- or under-achiever from a `toast`
point of view?' I.e., did his Holiness outweigh his lack of
Toastiness?"
-- Rick Chalfant (rhc00@juts.ccc.xamdahl.com)
"I suppose I could fashion a bike out of old platters and drive
motors. God knows some of the old stuff is big and strong
enough for it. Makes a nice circular saw cum shredder, too, when
not needed for driving."
-- Bram 'mouser' Smits (bram@fangorn.xs4all.nl)
"The Internet is like a freight train roaring along while people
are laying tracks in front of it. It's not just gaining on those
laying tracks; it's gaining on the steel mills."
-- Matt Mathis
"It's aetually pretty de1ightfu1 if y0u have ever rcad the
doeumentatjon of 0rigin's U1tima 1-V1 Enc0re co11ection CD."
-- Linards Ticmanis (Linards.Ticmanis@post.rwth-aachen.de)
commenting on OCR software
"Lately I've been saying, 'Have you got there yet?'"
-- Mike Stella (mike@thinc.net) taunting Windows users
"Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of
history. America is a product of philosophy."
-- Lady Margret Thatcher
"I don't *care* if there's been a nuclear holocaust -- Usenet News
hasn't been received for 36 hours and I'm moving to another ISP."
-- Joe Chew (jtchew@netcom.com)
"Deleting this country could cause instability. Are you sure you
want to continue? (Yes) [No]"
-- GUI dialog box in an illustration for "The Future of Warfare,"
_The Economist_, March 8th-14th 1997
"IMMEDIATE OPENING for Window Manager. The successful applicant will be
able to handle several hundred clients. BS/X11 required. Own colormap a
plus. Send cover letter & resume to...."
-- Andrew Carey (careya@PEAK.ORG)
"WOMEN WHO BATHE"
-- subject line to a alt.sex.* spam which leads to interesting
speculation about the standards of those who respond to spam
"Of course, *aesthetics* are a different matter. If, as I
suspect, Tom doesn't like because it's just plain ugly and an
oozing LISPish wound on the otherwise virgin and unblemished
cheeks of the blushing and fair maiden we call Perl, then we're
verging into taste wars. I've been to Tom's place. You don't
want to get into taste wars with Tom."
-- Nathan Torkington (gnat@elara.frii.com)
"Next week: tactile load monitoring! Start up EMACS and crush your
sysadmin!"
-- Wim Lewis (wiml@netcom.com)
"And then their car turns into a pumpkin and they go back to live
with their evil stepmother and stepsisters. The smart ones will
leave a shoe at the office on their way out."
-- Tom "Tom" Harrington (tph@rmii.com) on what happens to y2k
specialists in the year 2000
"J.D. Falk (jdfalk@cybernothing.org) wrote:
'So, if a tree falls on the way, and there's nobody there, does it
make a sound?'
Who cares ? I assume that if the world is properly optimized all the
creaking and falling over rubbish isnt done."
-- Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
"`Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'intrate.` -- Dante (`Inferno`)
Usually translated as `Abandon all hope, ye who enter here`
(though `Leave behind all hope...` might be better). It's the
inscription above the gates of hell in the first part of Dante
Alighieri's trilogy. Should flash on every computer before entering
USENET, no?"
-- Jeffery J. Leader (JeffLeader@WorldNet.att.net)
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going
to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly
overhead."
-- Ross Callon, RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths, truth #3
"If ease of use is the highest goal, we should all be driving golf carts."
-- Larry Wall
"When they came for the Trekkies, I said `Hey, you guys missed a
couple. See, there's one right over *there*.' When they came
for the OS flamers, I said `Guess what they run in Hell, buddy!'
When they came for the spammers, I said `Glad to see my tax money
at work!' When they came for the MMFers, I said `I thought you
got those guys last time you stopped by.' When they came for the
AOLers, I said `October came late this year.' When they came for
the people who post their messages in HTML, I said `So, you guys
hiring anytime soon?' When they came for the 3L1T3 Hacker D00dz,
I bought them a round of beer."
-- Jake Kesinger (kesinger@math.ttu.edu)
"If we insist on creating programs smart enough to make up for the
deficiencies of lusers, we end up fighting with both lusers and
programs. This is not progress."
-- S Keeling
"Ok, we will take the spammer and and beat the shit out of him and
then post the gifs on the net for all to see."
-- Doug Palin (doug@pacifier.com)
"One computer is a problem. A computer network is a large problem.
The internet is the world's largest problem."
-- Douglas Warren, quoted in J.D. Falk's .sig
"If you think there is a solution, you're part of the problem."
-- Zippy
"The PER$I$TENT use of CAPITAL LETTER$ in ARTICLE$ is the U$ENET
equivalent of WRITING letters, in GREEN INK, to MATH$ professors
CONTAINING incorrect PROOF$ of techniques TO trisect ANGLE$."
-- Geoff. Lane's (e858343792@swirl.mcc.ac.uk) .sig
"BLACK IS WHITE. FREEDOM IS TYRANNY. DELETE IS BACKSPACE."
-- H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
"But the second or third time I read news on PANIX Jim mentioned
to me that rn had been installed since I'd last looked. He
noticed I was 'more'ing the news spool."
-- Mara Chibnik (mc@panix.com)
"The secret of the demagogue is to appear as stupid as his
audience so that it can believe itself to be as smart as he."
-- Karl Kraus
"Give a man a piece of working code and you solve his problem.
Teach a man to write code and you give him a lifetime of new
problems."
-- Timothy J. Luoma <luomat@peak.org>
"Oh dear, now I've visions of modems cheek-kissing instead of hand-shaking."
-- Gary Barnes (gkb@aber.ac.uk)
"I seem to find that modems frequently do this although it tends
to be more along the lines of 'You can kiss my ass' rather than
the more European greating you were referring to."
-- Ian Dobbie (ian@muscle.rai.kcl.ac.uk)
"Harvey Mudd College's ugly sculpture 'Rusto the Ant God' (proper
name something like 'Motion Shield') wandered about a bit. After
the authorities moved it from its first new home and back to the
Student Union, the counter-authorities installed it into concrete
in front of the Administration building. Apparently a case of
'you bought it, *you* stare at it all day.'"
-- Scott Hazen Mueller (scott@zorch.sf-bay.org)
"Get either a killfiler or a gun (God's own retroactive moderator...)
and a shitload of ammunition."
-- Keith M. Lucas (sillywiz@excession.demon.co!uk)
"Kill them all, God will know His own."
-- Bishop of Angouleame, when asked how to tell 'true believers' from
'heretics', during the Albigensian Crusades
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains....The war will be
over one day. I shall then consider that my life's final task
will be to solve the religious problem."
-- Adolf Hitler (quoted in Bormann's records)
"BTW, if you look at the Old Testament life expectancies, they go
from near mellinia to modern life expectancy shortly after the
flood. My theory is that there was a canopy of vapor over the
Earth proior [sic] to the flood that screened out much more
mutating radiation. At the flood, this became the rain, the
canopy was gone, and mutations started ocurring and shortening
lives. Thereafter, God instituted the ban on inbreeding."
-- Steven Taylor (stevent@sprynet.com) justifing the incest in
the bible
"If the NSA has time to read my e-mail, I wish they'd send me a
bloody monthly summary!"
-- Jef Bryant
"Any member of the public who trusts Usenet is at best gullible."
-- Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
"You think not having a mouth is inconvenient? Wakko Warner has
no DICK! When his big day comes, that's going to be really
strussfrating."
-- Nick S Bensema (nickb@primenet.com) in alt.sex.hello-kitty
"People who read Wired are *exactly* everything that's wrong with
the net."
-- Thor Lancelot Simon (tls@rek.tjls.com)
"I kinda like the paper stock. Wired is one of the few magazines
where the ink *doesn't* bleed through to the opposite side. And
given the amount of ink they put on their average page, this is a
Good Thing."
-- Daniel Rosenbaum, editor-in-chief, Internet Shopper
(drosenba@panix.com)
"X.400 was designed by people who really didn't want to
communicate with each other in the first place."
-- Michael J. O'Connor
"Hurrah! Please repeat this loudly to those folks whose 'means'
are usenet and whose 'ends' are getting simple questions answered
with as little work and thought as possible."
-- Douglas Seay (seay@absyss.fr) replying to "The ends don't
justify the means."
"HEY FUCK HEAD WHATS THE POINT OF HAVING A PAGE IF NONE OF YOUR LINKS
WORK?"
-- Kilgor Trout (young@ebtech.net) upon discovering the WaReZ sites,
eg (http://www.afn.org/~riffer/warez.html)
"It is time to replace humanoid emotions with Artificial Intelligence
programs..."
-- John Grubor (drg@manus.org)
"...the cabal is now plotting with Netscape and Sun...
I do not know whether to trust Linux as an OS with a solid future."
-- John "Manus" Grubor (quoted by J. D. Falk)
"Those who call DrG a 'kook' are just jealous of him."
-- John Grubor, drg@manus.org
"Average sex is better than being a billionaire."
-- Ted Turner, billionaire, 5 February 1997
"You can't be too rich, too thin, or have too much swap space."
-- Kurt Lanza
"Actually Bob _currently_ rm's all backlogs once every 15 minutes
and newfs's every 6 hours I think. Of course, the fact that he's
only got a 1.6gb SSD might have something to do with his
expiration policy."
-- Clayton O'Neill (coneill@oneill.net)
"A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, fucked for dinner."
-- Cynthia Cunningham describing the "mudslide" diet
"Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential
food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat."
-- Alex Levine
"Never eat more than you can lift."
-- Miss Piggy
"The invention provides means for continuously trapping sparrows
and supplying a cat and neighborhood cats with a supply of
sparrows."
-- U.S. Patent no. 4,150,505
"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the
fourth beast meow, 'Come and see.' And I looked, and behold a pale
admin, and their name that followed him was CABAL(tinc), and LARTs
followed with them."
-- James G. (macabrus@aol.com)
"The Net is my shepherd. I shall not want a life.
It leadeth me to all parts unknown for my wallet's sake.
It filleth my mailbox with spam; my killfile runneth over.
And though I complain and 'remove' and scream my lungs out,
In the end, the spammer ignoreth me.
Yea, though he walk through the valley of the shadow of Usenet death
In the presence of a thousand cancelbots, he heedeth me not.
Surely spam and junk mail shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Net forever."
-- James G. (macabrus@aol.com)
"Remember, SCSI is not black magic. There are fundamental
technical reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a goat at
midnight in order to get a SCSI device working properly."
-- Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet (galactus@htmlhelp.com)
"'Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.'
-- Darth Vader, on the Internet"
-- Ron Echeverri (rone@bofh.noc.best.net)
"Use the docs, Luke."
-- Tad McClellan (tadmc@flash.net), in comp.lang.perl.misc
"Old man pages, Dat old man pages,
He don't say nuthin', He must know somethin'
He jus' keeps troffing, He keeps on troffing, Aaa-long."
-- Malcolm Ray, from Sean B Purdy's (sean@fastnet.co.uk) .sig
"What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that
people have stopped banging their heads against?"
-- Larry Wall
"Why yes. The entire idea of a 'Middle Ages' is a fiction,
invented in Berkley in 1964, based on research into European
Tourism Boards of the 18th and 17th Century."
-- pyotr filipivich (pyotr@halcyon.com)
"The careful application of terror is also a form of
communication."
-- anonymous maxim
"There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is
'dead'."
-- Jack Cohen
"Don't forget your parachute. If you need and haven't got it, you
will never need it again."
-- Jimmy H. Doolittle (_I Could Never Be So Lucky Again_, 1991, p85)
sign in pilot's room at McCook field [ca 1921]
"Do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it FIRST."
-- Ambrose Bierce (saw attributed to)
"The right to buy weapons is the right to be free!"
-- A. E. Van Vogt
"One tenet of the National Rifle Association's faith has always
been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from
obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America's
leading handgun control organization [Sarah Brady's Handgun
Control, Inc.] is wrong. Criminals don't buy handguns in gun
stores. That's why they are criminals."
-- Josh Sugarmann, then the communications director for the
National Coalition to Ban Handguns ("The NRA Is Right," The
Washington Monthly, June 1987)
"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that
power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by
other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as
service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery,
for which he is insatiable, implacable."
-- David Brin
"Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the
fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter
rule."
-- David Guaspari
"Reality, hmmmmmm... I think I've heard of that. I don't hold to
it though, the documentation is not very reliable."
-- Hugh the Barefoot (dvick@crl.COM)
"If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains
unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is
not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove
itself to be one."
-- John Barrow
"I guess you could work a squid in there, but it would seem
contrived."
-- Bo Bradham
"Don't worry, I gave her the soul-taking hatpin."
-- a subtitle to some random movie I saw yesterday in New York's
Chinatown ("Liao zhai yan tan xu ji zhi wu tong shen")
"Meowing from across the Street would not have a sufficiently
strong Effect to cure the Ills of the NIC. Only strategically
issued Meows /within/ the NSI Offices could possibly cause the
desired Results."
-- Sir Fluffy d'Meow (flufster@world.com)
"5. Options for Further Reducing Effective Throughput
...
(c) Firefly cryptography. A random signal (mason jar full of
fireflies) is used to encipher the transmitted signal by
optical combining. At the receiving site, another jar of
fireflies is used to decipher the message. Since the
correlation between the transmitting and receiving firefly
jars is essentially nil, the probability of successful
decipherment is quite low, yielding a very low effective
transmission rate."
-- Vint Cerf, RFC 1217
"The syntax must be compatible with SGML, so that with an
appropriate DTD (Document Type Definition -- the standard
mechanism for defining a document type using SGML), a general
SGML parser could be written to parse the data structure and
produce directives to a lifeform-reconstitution mechanism.
However, despite this compatibility, the syntax will most likely
be far simpler than that of full SGML (so that no SGML knowledge
is required in order to implement it), since it is anticipated
that the full complexities of SGML will not be necessary for the
description of even arbitrarily complex organic life forms."
-- Borenstein & Linimon, RFC 1437
"Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
entirely different."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Monotony is the awful reward of the careful."
-- A G Buckham
"Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm.
Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up
and down are forever."
-- The Laws of Physics interpreted in Kateri/Mary Anne's
(moh2@midway.uchicago.edu) .signature
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
-- Richard P Feynman
"Indeed, the Government's asserted `failure' of the Internet rests
on the implicit premise that too much speech occurs in that
medium, and that speech there is too available to the
participants. This is exactly the benefit of Internet
communication, however. The Government, therefore, implicitly
asks this court to limit both the amount of speech on the
Internet and the availability of that speech. This argument is
profoundly repugnant to First Amendment principles."
-- Judge Stewart Dalzell, ACLU v. Reno, 1996
"Aesthete of Asthetes !
What's in a name ?
The poet is Wilde,
But his poetry's tame."
-- Linley Sambourne, caption to Punch's Fancy Portraits no. 37,
"O. W." (25 June 1881)
"But now with hordes of Connected riffraff and others suffering
from similarly slack-jawed degenerations infesting the net and
their prizing being 'people oriented' as being (far past
cleanliness) second only to Godliness (ultimately in service of
the glories of national participation in the 'market economy')
and far more important than substance of belief, quality of
ideas, or any other such absolute standards, this state of mind has
become more and more prevalent. Very unfortunate, and again, of
course, advancing the state of the art."
-- Fred Trottelhauer (mail25193@pop.net)
"It's not getting mugged by Speedy Gonazalez that concerns me, it's
more the homeless bum that beat his own teeth out."
-- Emily Griffin (VeryPostal@aol.com)
"And you are correct about [phenolphthalein's] aperient qualities.
We used it as an acid indicator in high school when we were doing
our titration lab. We used a Ph meter to verify that what was
once HCl was now potable H2O - and then found some luser to
actually drink it. We had used a G-d awful amount of phenolphthalein.
The closest bathroom was two flights up. No one ever made it."
-- Sandy Herring (sandy@herring.org)
"The English chose a tongue that lacked a lot of key words and
resulted in a history of empire-building, trade and basic
conquest in order to obtain nouns from everyone else."
-- Internet Oracularity #924-06
"Contrary to Widespread Rumor, Usenet is Not Quite Dead Yet. It
will be recursively created until Someone finally gets it Right."
-- Sir Fluffy d'Meow (fluffy@meow.org)
"Juries are the sole arbiters of the facts."
-- phrase commonly appearing in US court decisions
"Meredith, I've made this offer before and I'll make it again. I will mail
you a WHOLE DOLLAR if you promise never to post here again."
-- Colleen "Minty Jane" Morgan (gunnm@eskimo.com)
"Yeah, but ten years ago we were debating whether emacs was better
than vi, whereas now the discussion is about whether vi is better
than emacs. So progress is clearly being made."
-- Steve Kirkendall (kirkenda@cs.pdx.edu) in comp.editors
"Of course, Panix would never condone such behavior. Of course,
we'd never find out, either."
-- Alexis Rosen (alexis@panix.com)
"The news spool is disappearing? But, I used to do 'egrep -i
something-I-want `find -type f`' all the time! Arggh! ...
Alright, alright, calm down. There are other methods. I know!
Compile suck on Panix, then suck the newsspool over to my
homedirectory, and do it there! It would be the fastest suck I
ever saw ..."
-- Bradley Ward Allen (ulmo@panix2.panix.com)
"Well borrow it back then, 50Gb is just about enough for a small
news spool."
-- Alan Cox (alan@snowcrash.cymru.net)
"I was a Teenage Man In Black for the Usenet Cabal!"
-- Devin L. Ganger (lewst@linda.teleport.com)
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its
opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with the idea from the beginning."
-- Max Plank, Nobel Prize winner in physics
"I think I'd like to see a Simpsons episode start up with Bart
Simpson writing 'I will not attempt to undermine the Usenet
cabal.'"
-- J.D. Falk in a.s.r
"Oh, suddenly, I'm reminded of two microwave ovens beside each
other. One with a sticker saying 'This microwave is for food
only. NO chemical, physical or biological experiments!'. The
other one with a sticker saying 'Using this microwave oven to
heat food might be dangerous to your health'."
-- Ingvar the Grey (ingvar@cat.rydnet.lysator.liu.se)
"Indeed, Idiocy is the Lifeblood of Usenet. Cancel it, and there
will be Nothing left."
-- Fluffy(R) (fluffy@meow.org)
"I'll have to look a lot closer at what I'm viewing as 'Usenet
1.5' to to say that it is intrinsically disastrous. It seems to
me like a valved buttplug as a cure for dysentery, but I'll have
to look at it a LOT closer to build a more serious metaphor :)."
-- Bill Stewart-Cole (bill@scconsult.com)
"Mine is a baroque pussy. A coating of gold paint and the addition
of a few cherubs and you'd have a magnificent Italian fireplace
in miniature.... Who can say... The fact is that when I'm fucking
I can feel the muscles running along his cock like my pussy's
trying to play the flute - and he can feel it too... I bet it
could read Braille. My old man and I were messing about with a
greased cucumber and some amyl nitrate and I went into orgasm and broke
the bugger into three pieces."
-- Bronwen (bronwensm@writehand.clara.net)
"here, tho, anybody who sticks out a little will be remembered.
why? because these people are all fucking THE SAME. it's like a
twit version of the borg."
-- Nicole Amendolora (name4647@SIMCL.STJOHNS.EDU)
"Write an answer saying that you will give him a feed, rot-13 it, uuencode
it, rot-13 again, base64 encode, rot-13 a third time and mail it. If he
answers, he has enough cluons."
-- Odd Einar Aurbakken (oea@bofh.dot.no)
"The California-based Center on Alcohol Advertising recently found
that 9- to 11-year-old children were more apt to recognize the
Budweiser frogs and be able to recite the beer's slogan than they
were to remember that Tony the Tiger says 'They're grrr-eat.'"
-- Buisness Week, 30 June 1997 issue
"All of the Lawyers start running when they see Grubor coming."
-- John Grubor, disbarred lawyer
"A gangrenous limb is still full of life. I wouldn't call it
thriving."
-- Peter da Silva (peter@taronga.com), discussing the state of
the alt.sex newsgroups
"My therapist says I take photgraphs that make people blush
because I suffer from 'middle-child' syndrome. She says I want to
draw attention to myself because as a child I was ignored. She
says I want to be heard, so I scream with my photographs. I was
concerned she might cure me so I stopped going to therapy."
-- Eric Kroll, _Fetish Girls_
"Sex isn't a hobby, it's an art."
-- Richard J. Sexton (richard@ns1.vrx.net)
"I bought a two-pack of Sno Balls at the 76 station and as I
walked home, for one brief moment, I thought... 'mmm, breasts'.
I cupped one of them in the package for a few seconds, but then I
realized what a freak I was being and just ate them like the
manufacturer intended."
-- Nick S Bensema (nickb@primenet.com)
"Lurking behind chartjunk is contempt for both information and the
audience. Chartjunk promoters images that numbers and detailsare
boring, dull, and tedious requiring ornament to enliven. Cosmetic
decoration, which frequently distorts the data, will never
salvage an underlying lack of content. If the numbers are boring,
then you've got the wrong numbers."
-- Edward R. Tufte, _Envisioning Information_
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
-- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
"I would just like to say that there is now officially, as I see
it, A Great Need for someone to solve the maternity clothes suck
and don't have pockets, let alone anywhere to put your
leatherman, problem."
-- Abby Franquemont (abbyfg@xochi.tezcat.com)
"So how come there's no, I dunno, ORA Kangaroo Book called
'Gestation Performance Tuning' or anything?"
-- Abby Franquemont (abbyfg@xochi.tezcat.com)
"I think it's kinda brave of you to admit, in public, that you've
got the insight of a baboon [i]n heat."
-- Kim (kim@nym.alias.net)
"despite Perl's invovlement with the Human Genome Project, not one
Camel was seen in GATTACA. However, i was placated by the
frequent scenes involving Uma Thurman."
-- brian d foy (comdog@computerdog.com)
"s'nice to find somebody who speaks fuckin' English out here onna
Innernet. Not like dem goddam fancy pants talkers from fuckin' England
or someplace."
-- TariaT (tariat@aol.com)
"Which is why the NRA is full of it, and The One True Meaning of
the Second Amendment to the US Constitution is that the average
citizens' militia should have tactical nuclear weapons. Hunting,
shmunting, for a revolution you need to be able to match the
incumbent power for power."
-- Scott Hazen Mueller (scott@zorch.sf-bay.org)
"When i'm in the mood for mass-produced American-style lager, i
slap myself and go get some Harp."
-- Ron Echeverri (rone@bofh.noc.best.net)
"some sick people don't go to the doctor and die from disease.
some homeless people don't go to the shelters and die of exposure.
some people use FORTRAN and stay in graduate school for seven years.
some people want the Red Sox to win the World Series and are disappointed.
some people use perl and have time for drinks after work."
-- brian d foy (comdog@computerdog.com)
"I truly believe that civilization starts where people live on top
of each other and stops at the suburbs."
-- Elias Halldor Agustsson (elias@BOFH.is)
"You're bitter, bev. Well, fucking *duh*, when the emotions and
the energies boomerang back in a blast of
passive-aggressivedaggers and waves of users who see that no one
else gives a shit, so why should they? Well, fucking *duh* when
no one will take you seriously. Well, fucking *duh* when some-
place you love and cherish and adore is torn to bits, trampled
over lkve so many daisies in a playground. 'Why do you care? It's
not real.' If it's not real, WHY DOES IT TAKE UP DISK SPACE? "
-- Beverley R. White (wednsday@huitzilo.tezcat.com)
"Usenet interprets good intentions as censorship, and routes around them."
-- Sirilyan (sirilyan@cugc.org)
"I was going to put something there about it being unfair to
Windows NT, but I realised in time that, unlike cockroaches,
Windows NT is something you can't possibly be unfair to."
-- Peter da Silva (peter@taronga.com)
"Wow! Wired has text? I think Wired is the anti-Playboy: I only read
it for the graphics."
-- Ron Echeverri (rone+usenet@bofh.noc.best.net)
"I don't assume that you're a lousy technologist because
you've got reprehensible politics. I assume that your
limited understanding of how networks work *and* your
reprehensible politics share some other causality."
-- Melinda Shore (shore@panix.com)
"Around here, lots of people get baby chickens mailorder. They come
in boxes with 20 chickens to a pack, shipped priority mail. They
make funny sounds in the mailbox, too.
-- Scott Dorsey (kludge@panix.com)
"[party poppers, grey with time, lie forlornly on the bare
boards streaked with grime. small vulcanised heaps barely
resemble the colourful balloons that once were. every so
often the door is flung open and shrill petulant voices
demand attention of the fetid air, but that which once
was, is no more.]
-- dog (dog@dog.net.uk)
"Actually, with LSD and a set of chains, you can go almost anywhere.
-- Thor Lancelot Simon (tls@panix.com)
"They say when you play that Microsoft CD backward you can hear
satanic messages....but that's nothing. If you play it forward
it will install Windows.
-- from the sig of Hecate (hecate@newsguy.com)
"You haven't lived right unless you've had the opportunity to test
your manual dexterity against a highly aggravated mother octopus."
-- Jimbo Louis Nieberding in www.jimbolouislabs.com/eggjournal.htm
"Their press release was roundly mocked for having more
trademarks than a Walt Disney store ..."
-- Declan McCullagh in a Wired News story about ZeoSync
"Oh they speak Mandarin there? Smarmy little buggers."
-- R. Airiq Williams while categorizing Taiwanese music
"I've had enough of this free web crap. When I was a kid, the
only thing we got for free was a beating."
-- Ed Anger, weeklyworldnews.com
"All elections in Castro's Cuba have been a fraud. The
voices of the Cuban people have been suppressed and their votes have
been meaningless. That's the truth."
-- George W. Bush, speaking in Florida, May 2002
"We currently require people who have had prolonged exposer to Motoroller
Compiller Code, some one who is able to write Algerythums to write
Silcon Chips and have knowledge of FPGR - FP Gater Rate."
-- anonymized job spec spotted May 2002
"Sometimes Ari likes to be cold."
-- Ari Holtan, age 26 months, explaining why he didn't want to wear clothes
"I know the near-impossibility of finding a partner
who is not going to run away from our most secret fetishes. When we're
looking for a partner we are not walking around with signs like 'ISO
Xtra large aureolae' or 'ISO cock that curves upward'. I certainly am
not going to put an ad in the personals with the headline 'FSM who
doesn't mind that I own more porn than he does'. The world is too
dangerous to seek out people for whom sexual fetishes are the
most-sought trait in a life-partner."
-- Sue Riankar
"I'd trade every conversation I've ever overheard (and I'm a
collector) to have heard that."
-- Bo Bradham (bradham@panix)
"'Twas brillig, and the swivey tongues
Did gyre and gimble in her Wabe."
-- Greg Andrews (gerg@panix)
"765.90. The Beast, plus a 15% tip."
-- Donald Welsh in rec.humor.oracle.d
"Sloppy thinking gets worse over time."
-- reported seen on sticker
"A half-duplex wench!"
-- Ben Rosengart
"But soon we fear that the ever greedy and aggressve
Microsoft will use their 'expertise' to market everything, even low-tech
gadgets. Then, no matter what you buy, they'll claim you can feel "the
power of Microsoft" behind you. Yes, that's what that pain in your ass
will be, Microsoft behind you!"
-- Mad Magazine, Oct 2002, "If Microsoft Made Egg Timers"
"Run. Run away. Run far, far away, do not pass go, do
not collect two hundred orgasms."
-- Elf M. Sternberg
"I realized after posting it that the ambiguous referent
could work to my disadvantage."
-- Melinda Shore
"Ozzy Osbourne used to snort ants. Led Zeppelin had sex with hookers
on private planes. And I start a book club. Because one can only snort so
many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort
and companionship of a book."
-- Moby (the musician)
"Go on, quote me out-of-context, you *know* you want to."
-- James Boyden in a Usenet post
"Curb your regexes! All regexes must be on leash."
-- Dallman Ross on boundaries in procmail REs
"Larger, more dented vehicle wins, except taxis trump all."
-- John Clear (jac@panix) explaining "right of mass"
"Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the
right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is
extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject ---
about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car;
some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles
better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper,
and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher
rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also
park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another
thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud,
snow, water, woods --- you can take a rented car anywhere. True,
you can't always get it back, but that's not your problem, is it?"
-- P. J. O'Rourke
"Nobody can remember very much of e, even the guys who
can reel off the first n thousand digits of pi."
-- Mark Atwood (mra@pobox.com)
"... but when you need to get a big peg into a small hole, I can't think
of a superior product."
-- Elf Sternberg on the merits of Crisco
"Good spelling, punctuation, and formatting are essentially the
on-line of bathing."
-- Elf Sternberg
"He's got a cold, cold heart, but that's from sitting on an ice
floe all day."
-- Anthony de Boer
"Nice! Of course, you don't often see jets, even improvised, in
most machine rooms. Even at Thiokol."
"
-- Derick Siddoway (derick@bitflood.net)
"SpamAssassin is a miracle of software engineering -- that is,
it's a miracle that it works at all."
-- Ben Rosengart (br@panix)
"Well 'pistoning' isn't as good as 'Double clutch me you mother fucker.' but
then at this late date I can't even remember who I'd be plagiarizing. Maybe
that was in 'Skinny Legs and All'."
-- cmsix@hotmail.com
"It's a combination of several fetishes: industrial robotics, female
anatomy, and flourescent light in that order."
-- Chris Cunningham
"Evil elation filled Homer as he saw how in only
minutes he had corrupted the Erstwhile Empress of
Erotica. Reaching between her legs he expertly
flicked her indirect object with one hand and pinched
the engorged modifier of a large dangling participle
with the other. In no preposition to object, she let
Homer slide his first person singular into a
pluperfect tense conjunction with her direct object.
The horny grammarian was in an subjunctive mood, long
past her interrogation point and her active voice rang
out imperatively, "Fuck me! Fuck me!" Homer had
Celeste where he wanted her, on her hands and knees,
writhing in passion, over-using alliteration and
splitting infinitives right in the middle of her
period."
-- Homer Vargas
"Ever wonder if all the flags are an attempt to reassure ourselvses
that this is still America despite all the evidence to the contrary?"
-- Keith F. Lynch
"In the actual USAP, employees are forbidden flamethrowers."
-- Big Dead Place website [USAP: United States Antarctic Program]
review of the movie _The Thing_
"Im [sic] pretty sure you need a hazmat permit to handle durian
extract. I'd check with the local DOT office."
-- ernie in a boingboing discussion forum on smelly bus riders
"Just like in the Olden Days when your name performed
some magical sequence of operations in TECO, we can feed the smiley
dictionary to trn's macro processor and see what different smiley faces
evoke strange and useful behavior. 'I didn't like to use smilies at
all,' says Jethro Bodine of Beverly Hills, CA, 'until I found that the
sideways grinning cheshire cat smoking a cigar smiley actually causes
trn to kill all posts mentioning Dave Rhodes. Great work, Mr. Davison!'"
-- trn FAQ
"I drank C from a nipple."
-- r. l. reid (ro@panix)
"The next STS-107 status report will be issued after landing, or
as events warrant."
-- Last line of NASA's last normal status report for the space shuttle
Columbia
"That metaphor just died from exhaustion."
-- James Wetterau (jwjr@panix)
"I also have a set of wrenches, but none of them are quite large enough
to tighten the Pentagon if it gets loose. Not to mention it has five
sides rather than six. Maybe that's to keep pranksters without special
tools from unscrewing it at night."
-- Keith F. Lynch (kfl@KeithLynch.net)
"Personally, I would value a competent politician achieving political
office in exchange for my vote. The fact that this is apparently
forbidden by law goes a long way towards explaining the current state
of the government."
-- Alex Elliott (elliott@panix)
"The differences in temperature, texture and intensity combine to
create a fleeting work of dairy art that engages the palate like dirty words
at the moment of orgasm which fades into a gooey bowl of missed chances if
not seized."
-- Lore Sjöberg on hot fudge on sundaes
"Creationists must continually evolve new techniques for staying rigid."
-- aha in a boingboing discussion group
"Banners are an abomination unto the lord; were we to display graphic
banners as some trashy porn sites do, we would lose our innocence and purity."
-- Rotten.com FAQ
"Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this
case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who
have together delivered some of the most amateurish
pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into
Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise
but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have
obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with
hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their
pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of
gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the
Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts
that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their
briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually
occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting
task of deciphering their submissions. With Big
Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a
devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the
razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins."
-- Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corporation, 147 F.Supp.2d 668
United States District Court, S.D. Texas Galveston Division. June 27, 2001.
"Chocolate KRE-MEL in MILK makes milk a more DELICIOUS BEVERAGE"
-- 1950s advertisment
"True, but the fallen also have the cops and the indecent exposure laws."
-- Mark Atwood (mra@pobox.com) on only the fallen having a
nudity taboo
"First they came for the verbs and I said nothing, for verbing weirds
language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing, for I
no verbs."
-- MEow (nikittariber@yahoo.com)
"'For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be
stopped,' conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. 'And yet,
in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings,
re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous
and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done
with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear
paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up.'"
-- The Onion, Jan 2001
"A shopping trip to Big Boys Balloons reveals one of the laws of the
Internet: Any object, no matter how innocent, can be made to appear sexual
if photographed with hairy men in tight wrestling uniforms."
-- Cruel.com site of the day for 2 May 2003
"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for
those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have
failed-where the government refuses to stand for reelection
and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today,
facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make
only once."
-- Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Judge, in Silveira v Lockyer, May 6, 2003
"50cent your the beat raper in Cleavland"
-- misdirected fan mail
"What we did have was names on our sleeping bags: Rolf had written
Selma Hayek on his, and I had written Jennifer Lopez on mine, in big white
letters. In some way or another we went to bed with these girls every single
night of the trip: 105 total."
-- Eirik Sønneland talking about his ski trip across
Antartica, the longest (3800km) unsupported trek in Antarctic history
"The picture is definitely special because it features friends, even if
only through Usenet, with real personalities and clues, which is an
aspect completely missing from generic processed pr0n product."
-- Anthony de Boer discussing a lusty-wench photo
"I think any reasonable person would admit that the man has
terrific taste in cynical ploys."
-- Ben Rosengart on NYS Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
"Considering the number of wheels Microsoft has found reason
to invent, one never ceases to be baffled by the minuscule
number whose shape even vaguely resembles a circle."
-- anonymous
"Unfortunately, they only sell kegs with beer in them, and that much
beer was certain to have a deleterious effect on our study."
-- Rob Cockerham, "How much is in a keg?", cockeyed.com
"I remember watching a prep cook having a breakdown and in the midst of
it taking a 20-gallon pot of eggs that were hard-cooking, emptying it on
the floor, and stomping them like a French vintner screaming in a high
panic all the while 'HATCH NOW, YOU LITTLE DINOSAURS!!!'"
-- Brian Mailman (alt.humor.best-of-usenet)
"Lenin's legs turned up in my Amazon Gold Box offers the other day, but
I clicked past them without thinking."
-- Stephan Jones, on the selling off of Russian historical artifacts
"The best possible outcome of this would be if incensed geeks dismantled
Hollywood stone by stone and salted the earth where it had stood."
-- Adam Thornton (adam@fsf.net)
"and you say chocolate mama
chocolate up the milk"
-- Arnold Adoff, _Black is brown is tan_
"Oh, ghastly you,
With lips of blue,
Your ruddy eyes
With carmine sties
Enchant me."
-- William Steig, _Shrek!_
"I long to know the soul within
Your lovely exoskeleton."
-- David Kirk, _Miss Spider's Wedding_
"The ways of peace die a hard, painful death."
-- WizKids MechWarrior box text
"We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not
in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the
business of selling our consumers products."
-- Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays to a Fortune magazine
interviewer, reprinted in Adbusters #47 May/June 2003
"A bootleg vinyl copy of Windows 78"
-- from the Red Meat Construction Set
"With a handful of girl scout cookies, you can weaken any funeral."
-- Meta-nonsense generator (http://kraybill.net/metaphor/default.asp)
"The whole truth having been disclosed before the justice, and something of
too vile, wicked and scandalous a nature, which was found in the Doctor's
trunk, having been produced in evidence against her, she was committed to
Bridewell."
-- The Female Husband or, the Surprising History of Mrs Mary, alias
Mr George Hamilton, Who Was Convicted of Having Married a Young Woman
of Wells and Lived with Her as her Husband. (published 1746)
"My friends were a little unhappy; I would buy beer with dollar
coins. They would get change for their fives and tens that would include
the dollar coins, as the clerk/bartender would get rid of them as fast as he
possibly could. They would then prevail upon me to take the damned dollar
coins back in exchange for a paper dollar."
-- Conjugate in alt.sex.stories.d
"I hate how quickly you can write. Please quit including time frames
and word counts in your blog postings or I will shave off all of my body
hair and send it to you via fedex overnight."
-- Craniac to Cory Doctorow
"Damn. This comment is so full of clever parental evil and self-serving
pleasure-seeking that I am just in AWE."
-- Richard Fitzpatrick in rec.humor.oracle.d
"Mary had a little key/She kept it in escrow/And everthing that
Mary said/The feds were sure to know"
-- Robert Waldner
"The measure of a man is decided by one or two sheep."
-- An American competitor from the World Shearing Championship
"Like the Reagan assassination. Sound concept could have been done better."
-- Tam, reviewing a comic at the Red Meat Construction Set
"LYSANDER. What ecstasy upon me Hermia wreaks!
HERMIA. Do I indeed? But what is this: it leaks."
-- Edward L. Stauff, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (some added scenes)
"Moments of Supreme Court hilarity are sort of hard to avoid as the
Majesty of the Law tentatively emerges, wide-eyed and blinking, into
a culture less and less afraid of its private parts."
-- Michael R Weholt (awnbreel@panix)
"Perhaps that's how the justices were able to convince themselves that
the filter requirement is constitutional. What the filters block and
allowis essentially random -- and content neutral restrictions are
subject to lesser scrutiny."
-- Brett Frankenberger (rbf@panix) on the Supreme Court allowing library content filters
"One can only hope that his dissent begins 'Well, I'll be
buggered!'"
-- Lee Rudolph (lrudolph@panix), on Scalia's dissent on the Texas sodomy case
"She's a cock-tease. He's her obsessive stalker. Together ... they
fight crime."
-- Sean O'Hara, seen in alt.humor.best-of-usenet
"It would be gross understatement to say that the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of
clarity. It is in many important respects a model of
ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction."
-- Supreme Court Justice Scalia in AT&T v. Iowa Public Utilities Board,
January 25, 1999
"You know what's better than being drunk on despair? Being drunk
on vodka. Let this be a lesson to ye, missy!"
-- E. in alt.fan.tank-girl
"Apparently, referring to a homosexual caller as a 'sodomite' who
should 'get AIDS and die' isn't quite consistent with MSNBC's
programming standards."
-- Mark Shaw on Michael Savage's canning
"That first free cup of coffee is all you need to get federal jurisdiction."
-- Danny Burnstein on porn filter ruling in US v. American Library Assn.
"Yeah but all he did is turn his backyard into a Superfund site. I
say you're not a teenager unless you've done that at least once."
-- Bo Bradham
"I don't even have the luxury of wishing she was dead, because I'd be
stuck with all the paperwork."
-- Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla on his worst date
"We are often concerned about the mean time to failure of archival
devices, and the potential lifetime of media, but we rarely consider the mean time
to product retirement or the mean time to bankruptcy by the manufacturer."
-- Sam Coleman, on retiring the Photostore trillion-bit archiver
at Laurence-Livermore
"Any attempt to curb user abuse will only result in more expensive abuse."
-- Garret Boer
"All this time I thought my suave lesbian recruiting technique was
accounting for all the new babes showing up at the local rug muncher
hang-out. I should have realized that it was just a matter of het girls
having too much free time because their husbands were all out shooting
paint balls at naked babes and stuff like that."
-- Katie McN on 'huntingbambi.com'
"Taking a cue from the mail-order sextoy industry the package was as
discreet as humanly possible. The return address only said "ID Partners, Inc."
and had a New Jersey mailing address. Think of all the explaining I'd have to
do if it showed up here with a Redmond return address, oh my!"
--
"Bedraggled, Cantankerous, Epicurean, Hornswoggled, Incipient, Lackadaisical,
Lugubrious, Obsequious, Persnickety, Ramshackle, Slatternly."
-- Cliff Johnson's excerpts from Graeme's List of Words that are Fun to Say
"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."
-- Dorothy Parker
"Cohen is obviously the guilty party here, and the one who
should in all fairness pay for his theft. But he's skipped the
country, and his money is stashed in some offshore bank
account. Unless Kremen's luck with his bounty hunters
improves, Cohen is out of the picture. The question becomes
whether Network Solutions should be open to liability for its
decision to hand over Kremen's domain name. Negligent or
not, it was Network Solutions that gave away Kremen's prop-
erty. Kremen never did anything. It would not be unfair to
hold Network Solutions responsible and force it to try to
recoup its losses by chasing down Cohen. This, at any rate, is
the logic of the common law, and we do not lightly discard it."
-- Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Judge, Kremen v. Cohen and Network Solutions, 25 July 2003
"I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons
of mass destruction to tell the world where they are."
-- Ari Fleischer, on Saddam Hussein, found by thisistrue.com in the NY Times
"Here's you, trying on lingerie in the Cosa Bella department, snapping
instant pics of various body-licking garments and sending them to his
phone/email while he's at the office, a personal fashion show: Like this
thong, love? Maybe this teddy? How about this lacy hip-hugger thing that
you'll rip off my ass later tonight right before you fuck me silly because I'm
getting you all hot and hard and hungry via this crazy luscious instant
cellcam technology? God bless Nokia."
-- Mark Morford, writing on nerve.com
"However, yelling 'Fuck!' in a crowded theatre does not create a clear
and present danger to anyone and thus cannot be outlawed. Althouth they
are both four letter words that start with F, the distinction is
constitutionally significant."
-- Eric Vannatta, (Colardo) Deputy State Public Defender,
"Motion to dismiss: The constitutionally of Fuck, 'Fucker', and 'Fucking
Fag'", 1 July 2003
"I'm too sexy for my speculum."
-- Tom "Tom" Harrington
"these lazy men use spray sun"
-- anonymous refrigerator poem
"Type design can be hazardous to your other
interests. Once you get hooked, you will develop intense
feelings about letterforms; the medium will intrude on the
messages that you read. And you will perpetually be
thinking of improvements to the fonts that you see every
where, especially those of your own design."
-- quoted by Pierre MacKay in the MetaFont manpage
"Still, these Teutonic gutturals make for an oddly pleasing
accent, freighting even throwaway utterances with extra comic punch that would
allow Schwarzenegger to read the phone book, or even a Gray Davis speech, and
still be entertaining."
-- Matt Labash on Arnold Schwarzenegger running for California governer
"The government is not really telling the truth to the American people. Past
administrations from the time of Alexander Hamilton have on the average
run responsible budgetary policies. What we have here is a form of looting."
-- Professor George A. Akerlof quoted in Der Spielgel (English interview),
29 July 2003. Akerlof is a professor at University of California, Berkeley and a Nobel
Laureate in Economics.
"One person with a fantastic view may be suspected of delusions; two people
with the identical view are just oddballs."
-- Michael J. Reagan, Judge, in United States v Frederick R. James, 14 May 2003
"...not to be confused with Wireless Infidelity, the site for bi-curious housewives."
-- aha, in a boingboing Wi-Fi discussion
"We're in Palestine, in a refugee camp. There aren't too many process servers
that are going to be coming into the Jenin refugee camp. We'll welcome them
if they do."
-- Ras Kabir, co-founder of p2p group Earthstation 5
""Bludgeoning Arab youth with giant baseball bats and making them sing
'Yankee Doodle' would be more subtle."
-- The Indian Express on the US-backed Arabic language young-adult magazine 'Hi'
"The accusation that Fox is a conservative network is pure propaganda."
-- Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News Channel, in an article titled "Calling Al
Franken a satirist is a farce" (NY Post, 18 Aug 2003)
"We do hope and trust here at the INQUIRER that the irony of underpaid
people in Harayana helping robots to call possibly out of work Americans
because of a widespread policy of corporate outsourcing is not lost on our
readers."
-- The Inquirer (a UK online publication) on Republican Party fundraising
"With FBI, the best thing to do is answer the door naked. They hate that.
Then every question they ask ... 'Well, search me.'"
-- Dan O'Neill, leader of the Air Pirates
"Some days it is a good day to die; other days it is a good day to eat
breakfast."
-- Thomas in "Smoke Signals"
"Theoden: A great host of lawsuits, you say?
Aragorn: All of Isengard is emptied.
Theoden: How many?
Aragorn: Two hundred now. Soon, perhaps ten thousand.
Theoden: Ten thousand?!
Aragorn: It is an army bred for a single purpose: to destroy the
Internet. They will be here by nightfall."
-- James Grimmelmann on the RIAA suing filesharers
"Celebrated as the only man ever to enter parliament with honest
intentions."
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith on Guy Fawkes Day
"Some of his pedigree pets are allowed the run of the house especially on
days when Herr Hitler gives a 'Fun Fair' to the local children."
-- "Hitler's Mountain Home", page 195, Homes and Gardens (UK), Nov 1938
"I can't get Little Man out of the bathysphere. The woodpecker is no
help at all."
-- Mark Eckenwiler (eck@panix)
"On the legal side of the fence, though, we're not just talking about a
can of worms. We're talking about an oil drum of Arcturan Flesh-Eating
Tapeworms."
-- James Grimmelmann, on the Verisign .com/.net wildcard DNS
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
"Now when someone Google's 'genital cuffs,' this site will rank highly. Great."
-- Martin Schwimmer's Trademark Blog
"A quick grep of the thread shows not a single Clinton
reference (except for a sig). Not that I'd give this
theory too much weight, but, hey, this is panix.chat,
and you guys just aren't doing your usual due diligence
by failing to beat every possible conceivable theory
to death."
-- John Forkosh (forkosh@panix)
"Generally speaking, the US Federal government declaring a War on an
abstraction or the dreaded MEoW ('Moral Equivalent of War') on an
abstraction is a good indicator of a bright future for the
abstraction."
-- James Wetterau (jwjr@panix)
"You cannot simultaneously defend and destroy democracy."
-- T-Shirt protesting California's gubernatorial recall
"It's like the reverse of the joke about the drunk looking for his lost
keys under a lamp post, not because he expects to find them there but
because the light is better. We have to keep spending more and more
money poking around in the dark in Iraq; meanwhile the poor North
Koreans are jumping up and down under the lamp post, waving their
A-bombs, hoping to attact our attention."
-- Steve Baumgarten (sbb@panix)
"<meta name="stork" content="a ruddy glow that came and danced and went
upon the wall opposite.">"
-- from a piece of HTML spam
"A light doesn't need to be blinky to be a blinkylight."
-- Rev. Peter da Silva, ULC
"A lot of people misunderstand my past."
-- Sanford 'Spam King' Wallace, in a 7 Oct 2003 Wired News story
"It is easy to purchase the numbers on the net anonymously (but credit
card payment will not be accepted)."
-- anonymous in comp.risks on purchasing stolen credit card numbers
"I love an actress with a great pair of talent."
-- Andrew "Roo" Stellman on Tara Satana
"Even more interesting is that no one predicted that one day, we'd have
phones that could transmit pictures, sound, and video...and people would use
them to send text messages to each other."
-- Jeff Suzuki (suzuki@bard.edu)
"Have you actually been inside a Home Depot, jon_kill? Or, any large
store, for that matter? Or worked at one? Let me tell you, if I was still a
high school or college kid working some crappy corporate retail job, I'd climb
over the dead bodies of my co-workers to take apart some wacky lady's little
project, rather than deal with the usual mind-numbing madness that's the usual
order of things around there."
-- majcher disputing the idea that surreptitious in-store Home Depot
scupture is theft of employee time (for the clean-up)
"Cheap corn gave us a whole raft of new highly processed foods,
including the world-beating chicken nugget, which, if you study its
ingredients, you discover is really a most ingenious transubstantiation of
corn, from the cornfed chicken it contains to the bulking and binding agents
that hold it together."
-- Michael Pollan in the NY Times Magazine, 12 Oct 2003
"It's a trick. Get an axe."
-- Ash, Army of Darkness (1993)
--
"I've got a quart of lighter fuel, you wanna share?"
-- Chicken Fish
"White hat h[ij]acker?"
-- Steven O'Neill on someone demonstrating airline security holes
"Nowadays, when a musician comes into a gig looking for a line, it's most
likely a phone line."
-- Steve Lukather, quoted by Jens Johansson after mentioning the "sex and
drugs" part of "sex, drugs, and rock & roll" has now been replaced with "porn and
caffiene"
"On his left shin can be found a dead red rooster, dangling from a noose.
Popeye never tires of telling young ladies, 'I¿ve got a cock that hangs
below me knee.' Then, that ridiculous laughter."
-- "The Previous Adventures of Popeye the Sailor" by Jim Ruland
"You guys are lounging in a glass display, like freaking cupcakes at an
erotic bakery, and you're acting as if I just turned things up a notch to
'degrading'?"
-- from the Pussyranch blog, 23 Oct 2003
"I don't want to pollute the waters of indecision."
-- Rob Narberes
"The high score list for the 404 page is broken. If that's not in the top 10
for 'sentences I thought I'd never type'..."
-- Daniel E. Macks on a 404 page with a flash Breakout game
"Clearly there is a difference between:
She fucked the cum out of me.
and:
The cum was fucked out of me by her."
-- mat twassel explaining passive vs active voice
"I'd say you should be proud, except that anyone who wants a UPS for a
game console probably has a serious game habit."
-- Malcolm Ray to a parent mentioning his son wanting an uninterruptable
power supply for his Playstation
"I so love these brainless ditto-heads. The next time one of them uses one
of those, 'What kind of message are we sending here?' phrases on me I think
I'll barf all over them so they can take my message down to the corner dry
cleaners."
-- Johnny Meah, painter of freak sideshow signs
"Sex with a real woman trumps porn, but porn trumps women who dangle sex in
front of men and don't deliver."
-- Eric Raymond
"I love it when neurology so effectively validates my own innate cynicism."
-- Starchy at tribe.net
"It's not just that people want to pirate movies, though there are those out
there; rather, I like to think that most people are resentful of the
incredibly unfair and rent-seeking copyright laws as a whole, and piracy is
one way of protesting the system. Piracy may hurt the people who work on
movies and music, but it also hurts industries who care nothing about
crippling the public domain."
-- Steven Wu on the Lawmeme blog
"The tale seems to me very like the way this nation was led to war. ... We
were told that we were threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
but they have not been seen.
"We were told that the throngs of Iraqis would welcome our troops with
flowers, but no throngs or flowers appeared.
"We were led to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on
the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but no evidence has ever been produced.
"We were told in 16 words that Saddam Hussein tried to buy 'yellow cake'
from Africa for production of nuclear weapons, but the story has turned
into empty air.
"We were frightened with visions of mushroom clouds, but they turned out to
be only vapors of the mind.
"We were told that major combat was over, but 101 Americans [as of Oct. 17]
have died in combat since that proclamation from the deck of an aircraft
carrier by our very own emperor in his new clothes.
"Our emperor says that we are not occupiers, yet we show no inclination to
relinquish the country of Iraq to its people.
"Those who have dared to expose the nakedness of the administration's
policies in Iraq have been subjected to scorn. Those who have noticed the
elephant in the room - that is, the fact that this war was based on
falsehoods - have had our patriotism questioned. Those who have spoken
aloud the thought shared by hundreds of thousands of military families
across this country, that our troops should return quickly and safely from
the dangers half a world away, have been accused of cowardice. We have then
seen the untruths, the dissembling, the fabrication, the misleading
inferences surrounding this rush to war in Iraq wrapped quickly in the
flag.
"The right to ask questions, debate, and dissent is under attack. The drums
of war are beaten ever louder in an attempt to drown out those who speak of
our predicament in stark terms.
"Even in the Senate, our history and tradition of being the world's
greatest deliberative body is being snubbed. This huge spending bill has
been rushed through this chamber in just one month. There were just three
open hearings by the Senate Appropriations Committee on $87 billion,
without a single outside witness called to challenge the administration's
line.
"Ambassador Bremer went so far as to refuse to return to the Appropriations
Committee to answer additional questions because, and I quote: 'I don't
have time. I'm completely booked, and I have to get back to Baghdad to my
duties.'
"Despite this callous stiff-arm of the Senate and its duties to ask
questions in order to represent the American people, few dared to voice
their opposition to rushing this bill through these halls of Congress.
Perhaps they were intimidated by the false claims that our troops are in
immediate need of more funds.
"But the time has come for the sheep-like political correctness which has
cowed members of this Senate to come to an end.
"The emperor has no clothes. This entire adventure in Iraq has been based
on propaganda and manipulation. Eighty-seven billion dollars is too much to
pay for the continuation of a war based on falsehoods.
"Taking the nation to war based on misleading rhetoric and hyped
intelligence is a travesty and a tragedy. It is the most cynical of all
cynical acts. It is dangerous to manipulate the truth. It is dangerous
because once having lied, it is difficult to ever be believed again. Having
misled the American people and stampeded them to war, this administration
must now attempt to sustain a policy predicated on falsehoods. The
President asks for billions from those same citizens who know that they
were misled about the need to go to war. We misinformed and insulted our
friends and allies, and now this administration is having more than a
little trouble getting help from the international community. It is
perilous to mislead.
"The single-minded obsession of this administration to now make sense of
the chaos in Iraq, and the continuing propaganda which emanates from the
White House painting Iraq as the geographical center of terrorism is
distracting our attention from Afghanistan and the 60 other countries in
the world where terrorists hide. It is sapping resources which could be
used to make us safer from terrorists on our own shores. The body armor for
our own citizens still has many, many chinks. Have we forgotten that the
most horrific terror attacks in history occurred right here at home! Yet,
this administration turns back money for homeland security, while the
president pours billions into security for Iraq. I am powerless to
understand or explain such a policy.
"I have tried mightily to improve this bill. I twice tried to separate the
reconstruction money in this bill, so that those dollars could be
considered separately from the military spending. I offered an amendment to
force the administration to craft a plan to get other nations to assist the
troops and formulate a plan to get the UN in, and the U.S. out, of Iraq.
Twice I tried to rid the bill of expansive, flexible authorities that turn
this $87 billion into a blank check. The American people should understand
that we provide more foreign aid for Iraq in this bill, $20.3 billion, than
we provide for the rest of the entire world! I attempted to remove from
this bill billions in wasteful programs and divert those funds to better
use. But, at every turn, my efforts were thwarted by the vapid argument
that we must all support the requests of the commander in chief.
"I cannot stand by and continue to watch our grandchildren become
increasingly burdened by the billions that fly out of the Treasury for a
war and a policy based largely on propaganda and prevarication. We are
borrowing $87 billion to finance this adventure in Iraq. The president is
asking this Senate to pay for this war with increased debt, a debt that
will have to be paid by our children and by those same troops that are
currently fighting this war. I cannot support outlandish tax cuts that
plunge our country into potentially disastrous debt while our troops are
fighting and dying in a war that the White House chose to begin.
"I cannot support the continuation of a policy that unwisely ties down
150,000 American troops for the foreseeable future, with no end in sight.
"I cannot support a president who refuses to authorize the reasonable
change in course that would bring traditional allies to our side in Iraq.
"I cannot support the politics of zeal and 'might makes right' that created
the new American arrogance and unilateralism which passes for foreign
policy in this administration.
"I cannot support this foolish manifestation of the dangerous and
destabilizing doctrine of pre-emption that changes the image of America
into that of a reckless bully.
"The emperor has no clothes. And our former allies around the world were
the first to loudly observe it.
"I shall vote against this bill because I cannot support a policy based on
prevarication. I cannot support doling out 87 billion of our hard-earned
tax dollars when I have so many doubts about the wisdom of its use.
"I began my remarks with a fairy tale. I shall close my remarks with a
horror story, in the form of a quote from the book 'Nuremberg Diaries,'
written by G.M. Gilbert, in which the author interviews Hermann Goering.
"'We got around to the subject of war again, and I said that, contrary to
his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for
leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"'... But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether
it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist
dictatorship.
"'There is one difference,' I pointed out. 'In a democracy, the people have
some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the
United States, only Congress can declare wars.'
"'Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same
way in any country.'"
-- Senator Robert C. Byrd, quoted in the NY Newsday, 27 Nov 2003
"Phase one: build orgasm machine. Phase two: take over the world.
Phase three: profit!"
-- Donald Welsh in rec.humor.oracle.d
"Sighted people are accustomed to viewing the world in visual terms. This means
that in many situations, they will not be able to communicate orally and may
resort to pointing or other gesturing. They may also use subtle facial
expressions to convey feelings in social situations. Calmly alert the sighted
person to his or her surroundings by speaking slowly, in a normal tone of
voice. There is no need to raise your voice when addressing a sighted person.
Questions directed to the sighted person help them focus on verbal rather than
visual and gestural communication."
-- From "What to do When You Meet a Sighted Person" in Glenn Spell's webpages
"They may as well have skipped the hassle of securing licensing rights and
simply called this mess Mike Myers: Asshole in Fur."
-- Gregory Weinkauf, Dallas Observer, on the _Cat in the Hat_ movie
"Aragorn : Everyday Frodo moves closer to Mordor.
Gandalf : How do we know Frodo is alive?
Aragorn : He called me on his Verizon cellular phone a few minutes ago,
and sent me some pictures of Minas Morgul.
Gandalf : Verizon?
Aragorn : Nobody else has coverage in that part of Middle Earth."
-- Tom 'Tom' Harrington, on 'inexcusable' product placements
"That's better than at Roosevelt Roads, a base in Puerto Rico, where
I was not allowed to shop on the base, and not allowed to leave the
base. So I got pretty hungry, and pretty much had to beg for food."
-- Keith F. Lynch, on being a civilian contract at a military base
"Only a government which fights for civil liberties and equal rights
for its own people can stand for freedom in the rest of the world."
-- Adlai Stevenson, in 1953
"They must be stoned in hell."
-- Ali Mahdi, an Iraqi stating his preference for the fate of the Americans
"I just had Pizza with mentaiko on top (it was a seafood-mayo with corn, mmmm!)
last sunday night. It was so good, it violated the laws of nature."
-- James, a tribe.net user, on Japanizing food
"//dont need any other headers because glibc is automatically there! See gnu.org
//i forget why. The manual is too long to waste time reading it."
-- Mike Cox, linux newsgroup troll
"Reboot Reinstall Reformat Recoil Reload Recoil Reload Recoil Recycle."
-- Anthony de Boer, alliteratively solving Windoze problems
"First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing because verbing weirds
language. Then they arrival for the nouns, and I speech nothing because
I no verbs."
-- Peter Ellis in afp
"I am terrified of someone stealing all my money out of my bank account and
wasting what little I've saved on extravagent, needless things, yet I have
a wife. Go figure."
-- Roy. Just Roy.
"President Bush's war in Iraq, oddly, has begun to remind me of the
floating craps game in Guys and Dolls. In the classic musical, the 'guys'
have to keep moving the venue from one hiding place to another�to avoid
getting caught playing an illegal gambling game. The president, with much
bigger stakes, keeps moving his rationale for the war (as he rolls the
dice)�to avoid getting caught playing with the truth.
"His problem is that he has been caught."
-- Sidney Schanberg in the Village Voice
"Republicans and corruption go together like penises and envy."
-- Melinda Shore (shore@panix)
"I spend about six hours in the morning organizing and then about twenty
minutes doing my work."
-- Tom Insel
Rob: "Oh look, they installed XP on it."
Tom: "At least you know they tested it. Disconnect the network cable."
-- Rob Narberes and Tom Insel booting new computer
"I've been reading about the latest batch of viruses, the latest trick is
for them to try and uninstall each other. It's actually happened, the entire
Internet is a massive game of Redcode."
-- Liz Reynolds (ilaine@panix)
"Instead of building set in a park, we now have buildings set in a parking lot."
-- Lewis Mumford
"Try the bargain bin at Helga's House of Audiovibratory Torture."
-- quark42, answering where to get the soundtrack for "Chuck & Buck"
"The claim that the Department of Homeland Security has classified
durian as a weapon of mass destruction is an exageration."
-- bubba1@houston.rr.nospam.com in houston.eats (alt.humor.best-of-usenet)
"Editorial comment: as towers of logic go, this looks to _me_ like the
end-stages of a game of Jenga, but I have attempted to lay out the above
position without prejudice, simply for informational purposes."
-- Victoria Swann (tori@panix)
"Sometimes those female cables are pretty butch."
-- Dragon Green
"Few sentences in the English language bespeak a mysterious dark side than:
'I'm not allowed in there. And, quite frankly, I don’t blame them.'"
-- Modern Drunkard Magazine, Jan 2004
"191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot."
-- from "213 Things Skippy is No Longer Allowed To Do in the U.S. Army"
"[T]otally vindicated."
-- Fox News response to winning an appeals case in Florida on the issue of
whether the media can knowingly lie
"Recording industry Web site downed, possibly by zombies"
-- actual headline for an AP story in USA Today (don't know who gave it that),
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2004-03-22-riaa-site-swamped_x.htm
"You know there's something very wrong when people send out companywide email
asking you to come sniff their CDs."
-- Steve Scherf, founder of CDDB
"Oh! And his character was the kind I wished I'd had as a child: brave and sassy
and nasty and crooked and thinking of ways to outdo people. Not like the
lifeless fat pig he is now."
-- Maurice Sendak (author of _Where the Wild Things Are_),
reminescing about first seeing Mickey Mouse
"EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being
made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads."
-- Strategypage.com article "EPA Approved ICBMs", by James Dunnigan
"That's awesome! Only $96 to make yr expensive digicam photos look crappy!
Very cool."
-- "Joe" commenting on the "Lensbaby" digital camera lens which provides
Holga-esque distortion
"I refer you to the service in the faustian bargain basement."
-- David W. Crawford (dc@panix)
"Nothing says 'let's order pizza' like a fresh batch of trout smoothies."
-- lordstatik, in the Red Meat Construction Set
"My kids kept recognizing flaws in the presentation. You know, the whole
`millions of years ago dinosaurs ruled the earth' thing."
-- Schon Passmore, creationist mom on Disney World's dinosaur attractions,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/arts/01DINO.html
"The Oprah show described with graphic detail a sexual term known as 'tossing
salad.' It was so offensive my child's head literally exploded. Please ban
free speech so this never happens again."
-- Letter to the FCC, FOIA released without author:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0504044oprah4.html
"I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless,
goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television,
homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we
have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to
kids?"
-- Richard Nixon, on a Whitehouse tape discussing Archie Bunker's son-in-law,
quoted in "Reliable Source" column of 13 May 2004 Washington Post
"This is a new wife for President Bush. May god grant him many fertile women
with firm bodies and an election victory without problems in Florida."
-- Thuapon, a Sudanese "warrior" holding a Barbie, quoted in the Economist
"Having this exhibit, we can stop envying America, where Napoleon Bonaparte's
penis is now kept. ... Napoleon’s penis is but a small 'pod' it cannot stand
comparison to our organ of 30 centimeters."
-- Igor Knyazkin, chief of the prostate research center of the Russian
Academy of Natural Sciences, on Rasputan's penis being on display in a new
Russian museum, http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/04/28/rasputin.shtml
"So 'viruses : spam :: reality-TV : TV' or something."
-- Dallman Ross
" ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
(reason: 550 5.0.0 I do not understand your strange moon language)"
-- Tony Monroe's suggested response to a '31337' message
"Aye, give a man a chick and he has a one night stand,
get him a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken and he'll have
buckets of left-over thighs, legs and breasts to take
home after work each night fer free."
-- Internet Oracle, digest 1362-07
"At school you are not engaged so much in acquiring knowledge as
in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount you
can indeed with average qualities acquire so as to retain, nor
need you regret the hours you spend on much that is forgotten,
for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many
illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge
as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art
of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice a
new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into
another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure
and refutation, for the art of indicating assent and dissent
in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points
of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a
given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage and
soberness."
-- William Corey, 19th-century Master at Eton; 1861
"What about 'X-yes-we-have-no-x-yes-archive-today: NO'?"
-- Tim Connors in rec.humor.oracle.d [with a spelling fix]
"I have tried phoning in the past. 'Unproductive' and 'utterly
bewildering' are generally pale terms for the result."
-- Victoria 'Tori' Swann, (tori@panix), on contacting Aetna
"Pour straight Kentucky sour-mash bourbon over ice in a sturdy glass.
Think about rows of mint in a garden. Think about the mint left on your
pillow in a comfortable hotel room at the end of a long day on the
road. Think about the United States Mint churning out coins that used
to actually buy things. Think about any kind of mint you like, but
don't let any of it near the glass.
"What you are holding is not a mint julep, but rather a bourbon on the
rocks, a much more satisfying refreshment than some girly drink with
too much sugar and some ugly leaves in it. While enjoying the bourbon,
play a Ray Charles CD that includes his early 60s instrumental hit 'One
Mint Julep.' Turn up the volume.
"Refill glass as desired. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Serves 1."
-- Bob Edwards, former Morning Edition anchor, on a recipe for Summer Fun
"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop
these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive."
-- George W. Bush, before hitting a golf ball
"When you're dealing with a store like this, they're insured up the ass.
They're not supposed to give you any resistance whatsoever. If you get a
customer, or an employee, who thinks he's Charles Bronson, take the butt
of your gun and smash their nose in. Everybody jumps. He falls down
screaming, blood squirts out of his nose, nobody says fucking shit after
that. You might get some bitch talk shit to you, but give her a look
like you're gonna smash her in the face next, watch her shut the fuck
up. Now if it's a manager, that's a different story. Managers know
better than to fuck around, so if you get one that's giving you static,
he probably thinks he's a real cowboy, so you gotta break that son of a
bitch in two. If you wanna know something and he won't tell you, cut off
one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb's next.
After that he'll tell you if he wears ladies underwear.
"I'm hungry. Let's get a taco."
-- Mr White (Harvey Keitel), "Reservoir Dogs"
"Next thing ya know, they're gonna spamming for 'barely-i18n' ASCII-pr0n."
-- Daniel E. Macks in rec.humor.oracle.d
"The Central Intelligence Agency is committed to protecting your privacy and will collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us."
-- the privacy statement on the CIA web site, found via RISKs
"1. A Republican may not injure a corporation, or, through inaction, allow
a corporation to come to harm.
2. A Republican must obey the orders given it by corporations except
where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Republican must protect its own existence as long as such protection
does not conflict with the first or second law."
-- Day by Day (web comic), 30 July 2004
"What hope is there? Can't Yankee ingenuity do something about
this? Can't we, flabbergasting all the world with our
rediscovered genius for sudden death, do more for her than go
to church on Mother's Day and give her more gadgets to clean?
We already are.
For in its gigantic scramble to build more nasty weapons
faster and faster, American industry has leapt a dozen or
maybe two dozen years ahead of itself."
-- Elizabeth Jones quoting a "Better Homes and Gardens magazine from 1943"
"Pricks, aye pricks, those are my boon companions, unto me they are everything.
I live in the name of nothing but the penis sublime; and when it is not in my
cunt, nor in my ass, it is so firmly anchored in my thoughts that the day they
dissect me, it will be found in my brain!"
-- Juliette, by the Marquis de Sade
"It's much more fun to say 'superheated exploding eyeball goo', IMHO."
-- Jed Davis (jdev@panix)
"Night falls like a bad power point presentation"
-- Peasant's Quest game, at homestarrunner
"Kind of like a tamagotchi with tits."
-- Xeni Jardin, on a cellphone 'virtual girlfriend' game
"Eschew surplusage."
-- Mark Twain, in his criticism of Fenimore Cooper
"The of it all."
-- motto of Edward Gorey
"The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act
under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given
the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of
abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent."
-- Quote from a US Supreme Court decision censored ("redacted") by the
US Justice Department from their public copy of an ACLU petition
"Not that I disagree with your conclusion, but the really creepy thing is
that he could believe these completely mad things and still be quite
rational. His entire experience since childhood, his daily observations,
all the reports that reach him, all the information he gets, all support
the simple fact that he *is* heaven-blessed, a great genius, a military
giant, the glorious beloved leader of a mighty nation from which China and
the US cower in fear. If you or I were in the same situation, we might
well believe exactly the same. He may well make a perfectly rational,
sane, well planned out decision to do these things.
North Korea is like Disneyland with the polarity reversed."
-- Ian A. York (iayork@panix)
"For about $2,950, this amazing countertop machine will turn anything --
animal or vegetable -- into a frozen, airy, mousselike treat, vaguely
reminiscent of soft-serve."
-- Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue, Aug 2004, on a "Pacojet" machine
""Well, this is precisely the kind of thing I always warn my daughters
about! I'm always saying to them, 'Make sure that they use double-sided
tape so your breasts don't pop out!'"
-- Patti Hansen, in Vogue August 2004, commenting on a picture of herself
taken for the March 1978 Vogue
"I have a crappy lock and now I can't write a complaint letter!"
-- MKRG on bikeforums.net after duplicating the pick a kyptonite lock with
a ballpoint pen trick
"Don't think unnecessary thoughts."
-- Fassbinder's character in "Kamikazi 89"
"Oh, and K&R, not much plot to that one though[1].
"[1] Characterisation is pretty good though, you *really* hate that
bastard Pointer by the end of it."
-- james.keasley@gmail, on best books recently read
"Personal anecdote: I actually rented Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! from an
adult video store (which shared a strip mall with a head shop, a liquor store
and a massage parlor, talk about one stop shopping). It was in the 'classics'
section. The clerk told me that the last time he rented it to someone, it was
returned with a hateful note, saying, 'I am very angry and disappointed. This
is the cleanest movie I've ever seen!'
"Philistine."
-- jonmc at metafilter on the death of Russ Meyer
"Hell, just hook up an old copy of Eliza to a speech synthesizer:
'Can you elaborate on that?'
'How long have you been rebooting doesn't help?'
'Does it please you to believe I'm a fucking idiot?'"
-- Alex Elliott (elliott@panix)
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist
until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public
treasure.
"From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the
most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always
collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years.
"These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to
spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to
liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from
selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to
dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
-- Alexander Tyler, sometime in the late 1700s
"In the unlikely event of losing Pascal's Wager, I intend to saunter in to
Judgement Day with a bookshelf full of grievances, a flaming sword of my
own devising, and a serious attitude problem."
-- Rick Moen in Usenet. [Pascal's wager is Blaise Pascal's
rationalization for believing in God: is being wrong worth the risk?]
""September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day
liberty perished in this country.""
-- Judge Gerald Tjoflat, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, 15 Oct 2004
"Satan is a Christian God. Satanists are a kind of off-beat christians.
They don't need a group of their own -- they belong in some christian group,
or talk.religion.misc at most."
-- Thomas Gramstad (bfu@ifi.uio.no), 1990-03-27 in news.groups
"My favorite definition of the difference between a language and a
dialect, from my first linguistics course:
A language is a dialect with an Army."
-- Harry von Hamhorse-Kaplan
"The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will
be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology."
-- J.G. Ballard, from _JG Ballard Quotes: Does The Future Have A
Future?_ from RE/Search Press
"Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed
to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism
for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no
threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to
politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the
deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut
taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush
sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory
imperialism and turn it into administration policy."
-- "American Conservative Magazine" on why they are endorsing Kerry
against George Walker Bush
"Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for
accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in
our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all
the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with
America's great tasks."
-- The Economist's endorsement for president, Nov 2004
"Kid: 'Hey, you're a drunken posse. Wow! Can I join you?'
Homer: 'I don't know. Can you swing a sack of doorknobs?'
Kid: 'Can I!'
Homer: 'You're in, here's the sack.'
Moe: 'But you gotta supply your own doorknobs.'"
-- "The Simpsons", episode 1F09, "Homer the vigilante"
"It's 8 o'clock eastern standard time and the news channels are having
an orgy of pundits and partisans angling to get to fuck the big
chested blonde of politics; your attention. Political hitmen are
circling the orgy looking for one last ear to pump their lies and
misconceptions into. Slutty journalists are debating which candidate
has the biggest attributes and who will have the Viagra to last the
whole night. The Supreme Court is all fucked out and wants to go home
but they have to wait to see who'll be free to give them a ride.
Everyone is trying to guess which way the undecided virgins will
finally swing. The orgy has just started and some campaign reps are
already bragging about their performance."
-- Shon Richards in an Election Day (USA) 2004 post to alt.sex.stories.d
"Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of
the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly
evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally
entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will.' But their
parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted
from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an
airborne scrotum."
-- Manohla Dargis, in the NY Times review of "The Polar Express" (movie)
"Written in vim, W3C valid and UTF-8 encoded, for her pleasure."
-- rsnake@shocking.com, in a proof-of-concept HTML exploit possted to BUGTRAQ
"Nobody has ever proven that he didn't exist, so we have to
assume that he did. My personal belief is that he vanished
across the border into Syria. Possibly in Jennifer Tilly's
luggage."
-- Paul Fjelstad (fjelstad@panix) on the existence of Jesus
"But now the characters have embarked on one of the most dangerous adventures
known in literature: their story has been turned into a major Hollywood movie."
-- Manohla Dargis, NY Times film reviewer, in the review of
"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events", 17 Dec 2004
"Searching for Misfortune?
Find it on eBay! Free registration.
Misfortune & much more (aff)
eBay.com"
-- Google side bar advertisement, Dec 2004, for a search for "misfortune"
"Wait! How could you love him, he's just an android! I can offer you so much
more, like a pulse! (Speaks to the camera) Isn't that always the way. You know,
I thought we were really developing something there, I felt a real spiritual
connection. What went wrong? Sure, she was threatening to stab me with a
syringe filled with ammonia, but, I mean, please. I'm from Brooklyn. To us,
that's just another way to say hello! But then, you know, the inevitable
happens. One flex of a cybernetically-enhanced deltoid and it's sayonara. I
mean, how can I possibly compete with that?"
-- from "Terminator II" as done by Woody Allen (beancounters.blogs.com)
"I suggest that you abandon any ideas about having the unit repaired. Old junk
should only be replaced with other old junk. As an example, I buy laser
printers to get toner cartridges."
-- M J Dowden (mjdowden@panix)
"It has become clear to me that requiring IE6 has become a euphemism
for 'Our HTML is nonconformant and we have no intention of fixing it.'"
-- Walter Roberson, RISKS Digest 23.67
"Melinda's law of inverse butchness says that the bigger your chops the more
you can do with less."
-- Melinda Shore
"To put this metaphorically, we are not driving a car, with gas, brakes, reverse
and a lot of choice as to route. We are steering a kayak, pushed rapidily and
monotonically down a route determined by the enviroment. We have a (very small)
degree of control over our course in this particular stretch of river, and that
control does not extend to being able to reverse, stop, or even significantly
alter the direction we're moving in."
-- Clay Shirky, on progress
"A 35mm print of Scream, Blackula Scream has just arrived at my doorstep
this morning. I thought people might want to know this valuable information."
-- Scott Dorsey (kludge@panix)
"If you're the kind of person who will use this, that awkward sentence probably
adequately explains it."
-- Jick, at kingdomofloathing.com
"There's a line between right and wrong, and it seems like anymore nowadays
that line has got all jumbled up."
-- Maxine Pulse, co-founder, Citizens Against Nude Juicebars and Pornography
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/10797713.htm?1c
"Another reason for pride, that of being a citizen! For the poor citizenship
consists of supporting and sustaining the power and idleness of the rich. They
must work for those goals before the majestic equality of the laws, which
forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and
to steal bread."
-- Anatole France
"It's February, Pucker Up TV Actresses"
-- Headline on Arts section of New York Times, 10 Feb 2005
"I guess one good thing about a bed of nails is that you don't have to
flip the mattress."
-- rone
"[T]the Bill of Rights has to stay in a hermetically sealed
case until it can prove that it's not an aid to terrorists."
-- Ben Rosengart
"15. have nicely divided all things in this world into three categories:
things i can eat, things i can fuck, things i can argue with."
-- female blogger "wookiepocket", four days into experiencing what taking
testosterone is like: "the man project" (livejounral entry of 18 Feb 2005)
"'How will this software get my users laid' should be on the minds of anyone
writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social
software)."
-- Jamie Zawinski (jwz)
"They lurch when approaching a cell, and keep muttering 'memBRANES,
memBRANES...'"
-- Bill Snyder (bsnyder@airmail.net) responding to "undead viruses"
"Some dark corner of my brain just coughed up the appropos description of
what Terri Schaivo's parents are doing: 'corpse humping'.
You've lost 21 straight court decisions. Along the way you've smeared her
grieving husband, ignored her clearly expressed wishes, allied yourself
with the biggest pigfuckers on the far right, and shown that you are two
deeply disturbed individuals. Let her die already."
-- Paul Tomblin
"I'm sorry, you don't get to claim cynicism kingdom unless you also notice
that Bush's core constituency is stupid people, and notice that by a
strange coincidence he's also doing everything he can to destroy the
educational system."
-- Paul Tomblin
"Oh, the differences couldn't possibly *be* more vast! As we all
know discussing politics in a public forum very often leads to
inreased understanding between all the participants. And how
often haven't we all seen people simply give up beliefs that they
have had for decades, with a cheerful comment such as 'Gosh, you
guys managed to convince me! I was so wrong all these years. Your
excellent and polite debating tactics really made me understand
how foolish I was to hold on to my faulty beliefs! What you have
are FACTS, and my understanding was so fundamentally flawed that
I didn't even realize this. But after talking about politics in
this public forum I feel like I have been reborn, awakened, that
I used to be blind but now can see!'
Whereas discussions about taste usually don't lead anywhere,
really."
-- Jens Johansson (jens@panix)
"As I understand it, the FAA allows it because otherwise the
(potential) passengers wouldn't be flying, and would thus
be out of FAA jurisdiction..."
-- danny burstein (dannyb@panix) on parents holding small children
during flights
"<jamesm> what's a java strategy?
<undrewb> jamesm : its a paradigm shift to e-leverage your legacy OLTP
system to implement pervasive business systems
<jamesm> is it like a builder with a 'brick strategy' ?"
-- a bash.org IRC quote
"[Ashlee Simpson's] jeans were cut so low they seemed to be held up only by
her last meal."
-- show review by Dave McKenna in the Washington Post
"In the course of American justice, one would have to work hard to conceive of
a more fundamentally unfair process, than the fabrication of false data by
the government, under oath by a government official, presented knowingly by
the prosecutor in the courtroom with the express approval of his superiors in
Washington."
-- Lynn Hughes, a federal judge, overturning the conviction of Ed Wilson
"So, any thoughts on the possibility that Douglas Adams could appear in a
sequel movie, in the role of Hotblack Desiato?
Just digitally put his face onto some other actor, and voila, a year
dead for tax purposes."
-- Tom Harrington in rec.humor.oracle.d
"For the record: one cup of crickets -- about 200 individual insects --
contains 250 calories and only 6 grams of fat. Crickets are also rich in
calcium. So if you're looking to ward off Osteoporosis, EAT MORE CRICKETS."
-- David George Gordon, "Entomological Epicurian", in the Washington Post
"a-the-ism - belief that there is both a definate and indefinate article."
-- Stuart Moore, seen in alt.humor.best-of-usenet
"See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and
over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
-- George W. Bush, Athena Performing Arts Center at Greece Athena Middle
and High School Tuesday, May 24, 2005 in Rochester, NY.
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in
a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave
national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to
gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the
exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem
never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
-- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 (fortune file)
"And as they say in Marvel Comics, with great power comes great
error messages."
-- William December Starr (wdstarr@panix) on the power of using "awk and
sed ... piped directly to an SMTP server"
"Then we recovered the contents of /bin across the ether (it's amazing how much
you come to miss ls after just a few, short hours)..."
-- Mario Wolczko, 1986 (http://www.hut.fi/~hynde/humor/CrashRecovery.html)
"And as we think about these sobering numbers, the cold, icy hand of death waves
a jaunty 'hi there!'"
-- James Wetterau, Jr (jwjr@panix)
"We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and
stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities
rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out
of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out
of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's
going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the
porch."
-- George W. Bush, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050902-2.html)
"Me too. I mean, if it stopped with allowing the validity of slippery
slope arguments, I might be ok with it. But pretty soon you're allowing
for all sorts of other logical fallacies. After a while, it's
impossible to reason coherently at all."
-- opusthepenguin+usenet@gmail.com
"Previous company I worked for, the CFO who was brought in to either
save or sell the company was Dick Headelson. With that last name,
using the nickname for Richard isn't a good idea, especially since
Outlook's auto complete knew how to expand 'dick head' to him."
-- John Clear (jac@panix)
-------------- h u m o r s e c t i o n ---------------------
From the alt.bigfoot FAQ:
`Q34. What is the Bigfoot Shuffle^(tm) ??
The Bigfoot Shuffle^(tm) is simply described (in answer and question
format) as follows:
Q. What do I do when I continually get harrassed by some loser over email ??
A. That's easy ! Get out the old mail filter software and try this one
out for size:
if (from = "evil-enemy@up.yours.com") then
Forward postmaster@up.yours.com
if (from = "postmaster@up.yours.com" or from = "root@up.yours.com") then
Forward evil-enemy@up.yours.com
Q. I thought sending hate email to sys-admins was a direct violation of
one of the Bigfoot Ten Commandments ??
A. Yes !!! But you are not mailing your evil enemies sysadmin, (s)he is !
If they want to mailbomb their own sys-admin, it is hardly something that
alt dot bigfoot will interfere with. (Remember, *you* set up your
mail filter but technically your machine is just doing a public service
for you).`
--
Article: 8549 of alt.personals.bondage
"From: jtappe@grumpy.Tymnet.COM (Joseph Tappe)
Newsgroups: alt.personals.bondage
Subject: Re: SWM ISO Woman with BIG Plastic Flamingo
Date: 29 Apr 1994 02:12:45 GMT
In article <CoE8tH.7MF@efn.org>, brittg@efn.org (Britt Green) writes:
> *******************************************************************
>
> Dance about me wearing a mask of Margaret Thatcher and rub Silly
> Putty all over my thighs as you tease me with a pink lawn flamingo. Then
> call me your little clothes hanger as you wrap my feet in tin foil.
>
> Natural Chinese redheads preferred.
>
> --britt
> --
> Christ.....My eye feels like it's melting back into my mind. I hate it when
> this happens. I means I'm going to be up all night chasing it, trying to
> dig it back out.
>
> ********************************************************************
Umm
Waiter? I'll have what he's having."
--
Article 26 of alt.spleen:
"From: sethmcg@athena.mit.edu (Seth McGinnis)
Subject: Re: Spleen Power
Date: 13 Aug 1993 00:11:42 GMT
Keywords: A useful fact for Non-European Spleens
An interesting and little-known side-note to the marvelous
generative capacity of the spleen is that, should you be in need
of AC current (as many of our U.S. friends are, wishing to run
not just a Sony Discman(tm) off their spleen during a power
outage, but a full five-disc carousel CD changer, or perhaps even
a full-blown stereo system) it that, one can merely wire up the
spleen in series with the gall bladder and heart and in parallel
with both pancreas and liver, and have a marvelously portable
source of alternating curren power! The heart provides the basic
change in current direction, and the liver acts as a primitive
transistor and rheostat, allowing one adjust the wattage for the
desired use by ingestion of caffeinated beverage as appropriate.
The gall bladder-pancreas complex is essentially a step-down
transformer, and in a true marvel of nature, provides output that
is remarkably close to the U.S. standard 120 volt RMS output.
The frequency is a bit variable, depending on your level of
excitement, so don't try to run exercise equipment (like powered
treadmills) or a good, scary movie on your VCR using your spleen,
but on the whole it is a safe, reliable, and ultimately portable
power source no matter what continent you live on!
Truly, a marvel of nature.
--Beem^er"
--
"Catch a fly. Put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for
5 to 10 minutes. This slows him down considerably, so he's easier to
handle. While he's in there, make a miniature paper airplane with a
wing-span about double that of the fly. Take the cool dude out of the
ice-box and super glue his tiny feet onto the upper surface of the paper
airplane. As he warms up and revives, he will begin doing that most
natural of all fly activities: he will try to fly. If you have not made
your little airplane too heavy, the fly's wing beats will be adequate
for lift off. However, carrying the added weight quickly tires the fly,
so in mid-air, he will stop beating his wings, and the airplane will
soar downward. Seeing his plight causes the fly to once again attempt to
fly, with the same result. Little bursts of energy as the plane gains
altitude, alternated with slow downward glides. A thread super glued to
the plane will keep your aerial circus in the same room, or you can take
your new pet fly out for a walk, er, fly."
-- Gary Benson (inc@fluke.tc.com)
--
Article 333 in alt.unix.wizards:
"From: dane@sonic.net (Dane Jasper)
Evil trick of the day:
nohup y > /tmp/bigfile &
rm /tmp/bigfile
It will grow and grow, taking up space - but no file will exist... Drive
other sysadmins crazy! Fun at parties!"
(Although the file has been unlinked, the program still has a filehandle
for it and can access it.)
A conversation recounted by Brendan Macintyre <brendan@haggerston.win-uk.net>:
"Sitting on the underground, and clicking my tongue around in my
mouth. Someone says the inevitable.
Her: 'Did that hurt?'
Me: 'Yes, of course.'
Her: 'Why did you get it done?'
Me: 'Because I am protesting against angling, and have a pierced tongue
in sympathy with the fish.'
Then I got up and left her sitting there looking very confused."
From rec.arts.bodyart, a thread on stretching the scrotum.
"Julian Hurt (an183597@anon.penet.fi) wrote:
: It seems that to wear something on your balls semiperminantly you'd
: need to have something loose fitting (but yet not able to slip
: off - trickier with balls than it might seem) and moveable enough
: to get under for regular cleaning and having the weight at the bottom
: distributed broadly enough to not cut into the skin and affect local
: circulation (think of how too tight handcuffs cut in - you want to
: avoid that). I'm not sure what would work. I've thought of casting
: some sort of meatal encasement for my balls that would be shaped
: like my scrotum but in two pieces that could be screwed together
: surrounding my scrotum. That might solve the weight distribution and
: circulation problem, but it wouldn't take care of the cleaning and
: breathing problem. Another idea would be to use a compression spring
: for the stretching rather than weight with a bottom flange shaped to
: part of the scrotum to dispribute the pressure about. (I have in
: mind the sort of flexible spring wire that in on the inside of
: a car radiator hose - it's fairly strong compressed, but the wire
: is flexible enough that you should be able to get it wrapped around
: the upper part of the scrotum.)
jeff z-ler <ziehler@post.its.mcw.edu> wrote:
> Is it just me, or does this sound like the kind of thing that could be
> assigned as a project for an engineering class?
>
> human engineering?
>
> Sounds a lot more interesting than the typical 'take a coke can through the
> barrier from outside the boundary zone' group project."
From Oracularity #756:
" SELECTED-BY: DR. NOE <NOE@SAL.CS.UIUC.EDU>
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:
> Oh Oracle, who is so wise he even knows where Scott Adams is now, (And
> I DON'T mean the guy who writes "Dilbert") please spare me the smallest
> bit of your wisdom.
>
> I went to sleep last night thinking everything was fine. However, when
> I woke up, it appeares that I am now outside of a small white house
> with a boarded front door. The house is in a small clearing in the
> middle of a forest. Oh, yeah. There's a small mailbox here too. What do
> you think I should do now?
And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} Stuck and want some clues, eh?
} Here's a walkthru to help you get started.
}
} Inventory
} You're carrying: An M-80, a Power Ranger action figure, a small squid,
} and a picture of Pat Robertson.
}
} Look
} You notice a kid busy picking his nose while burning ants with a
} magnifying glass.
}
} Talk to kid
} He ignores you.
}
} Hit kid
} The authorities would file abuse charges.
}
} Show picture to kid
} God wouldn't like that.
}
} Give squid to kid
} What? And waste a perfectly good squid?
}
} Give Power Ranger to kid.
} The kid starts stomping ants with the action figure (ala Godzilla).
} You notice he drops his magnifying glass.
}
} Pick up magnifying glass.
} (5 points)
}
} Open mailbox
} Done
}
} Put M-80 in mailbox.
} (8 points)
}
} Put picture in mailbox.
} (18 points)
}
} Put squid in mailbox.
} The squid hangs on tightly to the mailbox, refusing to go in.
}
} Take squid
} Done.
}
} Look
} You see a mailbox. Inside the mailbox is a picture of Pat Robertson,
} and an M-80. The mailbox is open. The flag is down.
}
} Lift flag.
} The red mailbox flag is now up.
} (20 points)
}
} Use magnifying glass with M-80.
} Sizzle.....(25 points)
}
} Close mailbox
} (30 points)
}
} Run like hell
} Hey, this is a family game!
}
} Run like heck.
} (35 points)
} You run like the wind, and brace yourself behind the nearest tree and
} wait. The kid notices that the mailbox flag is up, and delighted with
} the thought that his dad's Playboy is about due, rushes to check.
} BOOM!
}
} Go to mailbox
} There's no mailbox here.
}
} Look
} You see part of the post a mailbox was on, and an awful red mess.
}
} Look at mess.
} It's horribly grotesque. You're amazed at how far kids can go these
} days. You see something sticking out of the dirt.
}
} Examine dirt.
} You see a small crater, with a red flag sticking out.
}
} Get flag
} The flag is stuck.
}
} Use squid with flag.
} The squid handily removes the flag from the soil.
} (42 points)
}
} Examine flag.
} The flag is imbeded in what appears to be the remains of an action
} figure of some sort or another.
}
} Look at house.
} You are outside a small white house. The door is boarded shut.
}
} Use flag on door.
} The flag/action figure/squid makes an excellent prying tool. In
} 12 seconds flat the door is unboarded.
} (50 points)
}
} Open door.
} Done
} (52 points)
}
} Enter house
} You are now inside the small white house.
}
} Look.
} You see a fridge, small bed, and an aquarium.
}
} Put squid in aquarium.
} The squid is glad to be home. Quite famished at this point, begins
} eating the tropical fish. He eyes the fridge with anticipation.
} (60 points)
}
} Go back to bed.
} (65 points)
}
} You have obtained a score of 65 points out of 100. This gives you the
} rank of snoozer.
} You let your thoughts drift as sleep overtakes you...
} You wake up. You are outside of a small white house in a forest
} clearing. The front door is boarded shut. Oh, there's a mailbox here
} too. What should you do?"
Article 27882 of rec.arts.bodyart:
"From: clonezne@tezcat.com (Elliot Shank)
Subject: Re: I'll take Delurk for $1000, Alex
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 1995 00:59:12 GMT
jmk974@ascl.usask.ca (Jillian Marie Koskie) wrote:
> I have read all of the information about them, but nothing has
>answered one question I have about the Prince's Wand...
> What exactly is it FOR?
It's for fun, of course!
'Cuz it feels good!
'Cuz you feel like having a big metal rod shoved down the throat of
your `best friend`.
To get people to ask you `What exactly is it FOR?`.
Your're tired of having your penis flop around `willy-nilly` (pun
intended) and decide to provide it with some infrastructure.
Rice Krispies(tm) don't provide the same pick-me-up that they used to.
It's the newest must-have designer item from Calvin Kline since his
latest `eau de homo`. Don't be the last one on your block to get one!
You were tired of your pneumaticly powered pea-shooter and decided to
get a hydraulicly powered one.
To act as a conversation piece at your next check-up.
To provide more resonance when whacking the sinks in public bathrooms
than the 0 gauge curved barbell that you used to wear in your PA.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Elliot Shank `I'm a man who's sick/But I've got class/
clonezne@tezcat.com 'Coz you only get respect when you're kicking ass`"
Article 3194 of alt.cows.moo.moo.moo:
"From: ftuck@henge.com (Friar Tuck)
Subject: Re: Kill Bears
Date: 1 Oct 1995 19:51:00 GMT
In newsgroup alt.fan.ceiling, rod.hibberd@mcc.com.au asks...
>Question? When an australian is eaten to death by an australian
> shark we don't (no more) go hunt it down and kill it.
>
> If an australian crocodile chews on an american
> tourist we tell the tourist (if still alive) that he
> or she was a fool, put the croc in councelling
> therapy for trauma, and find it a stress free home.
>
> So why do canadians, who usually fancy they are almost as civilized
> as the people in Sweden, why do they terrorise and kill two bears
> just for roughing up some aussie campers (granted a bit severly)
> who were, as far as I know, invading the bears' territory.
>
>What is going on here?
Rod, If I remember correctly, the campers in question also brought along
a ceiling fan to use in the tent--a nice one, Kelty's new model, the
Campmaster AeroFlow AF240. (A nice one, I intend to pick one up before
next summer's camping season begins--all brushed aluminum housing with
oiled ash fan blades.)
This may sound odd to you Aussies, but ceiling fans are held in great
reverence in both Canada & the USA.
This fan was damaged almost beyond repair in the attack.
Even though the target of this attack was the campers, it was felt the
destruction of the fan showed a wanton lack of reverence for ceiling
fans in general--and it's well documented that once a bear attacks a
ceiling fan, there's at least a 40% chance of a repeat occurrence.
It was felt that a 40% risk of further Ursine attacks on fans was just
too much, and the bears were put down.
Too bad this attack wasn't from a couple of cows or bulls! Bovine
offenders repeat only 7% of the time, and are thus given a second
chance.
Lemurs repeat an astounding 100% of the time!
But I digress. I'm very pleased to report a happy ending to this story.
One of the most prestigious & best known ceiling fan refurbishing shops
in the world, Wanker Rotary Ventilator Restorations (in Brussels), has
agreed to take on the task of breathing life back into this fan.
Some of Wanker's better-known projects over the last six decades include:
- Full restoration of the original ceiling fans in the Sistine Chapel.
These fans date to 1508-1512, and were installed one by one as the
plaster was laid for Michaelangelo's famous ceilings.
- Building from scratch, using original plans, the ceiling fans
originally intended for Notre Dame but omitted because of cost
overruns, using only materials & techniques that would have been
available when it was built. Am I remembering correctly, this took
place in the fourteenth century? Anyway, it now sports the ceiling
fans the original designers intended it to have.
- Renovation of that single ceiling fan taken from the Titanic's watery
grave after its discovery earlier in this decade. Regular readers of
this newsgroup will not need reminding of the historical significance
of *that* project!
Friar Tuck ftuck@henge.com
http://www.henge.com/home/ftuck/welcome.html"
Rewriting Lyrics, by the various authors mentioned:
"Entry #1 --
Let's talk about sets baby,
Let's talk about A and B.
Let's talk about all the unions
and intersections that can be.
by Jim Xikas
jxikas@ic.sunysb.edu
Entry #2 --
Let's talk about X baby,
Let's talk about widget trees.
Let's talk about all event types
from the server, that can be.
by Josh Abramson
jabramso@ic.sunysb.edu
Entry #3 --
Let's talk about yacc baby,
Let's talk about parser trees.
Let's talk about grammar rules
(context free), coded in C.
by Eli the Bearded
bgriffin@ic.sunysb.edu
Entry #4 --
Let's talk about hex baby,
Let's talk about binary,
Let's talk about code in c,
HTML, UIL, and assembly.
by April Berdoulay
aberdoul@ic.sunysb.edu"
An IJ coded in c++ (by Dario Vlah <dvlah@ic.sunysb.edu):
"#include <converse.h>
#include <topics.h>
class czar_spermit:void {
void talk(void) {
Subject x;
while(1){
set_volume(-1>>1); // hack for max int
cout << random_select(!exists(x,SOMEONE_AGREES_WITH_X));
} // while
} // talk
} // class czar_spermit"
A Story by Me:
"The Story Behind Fun Tak(tm).
DAP(tm) Fun Tak(tm) is that fun sticky goo you can buy at
the campus bookstore to hold up your posters. True to its
name, the stuff is a whole lot of fun to play with: 'Oh
lets see how long it can hold *this* to the ceiling!'
However fun it may seem, there is a dark and unpleasant
story behind the origins of this 'reusable adhesive.' The
following account is derived from state-of-the-art dream-
state telepathic investigative journalism. Not a fact has
been changed or invented.
First off they shot Gargamel and his stupid cat, too.
('Dulce et decorum est pro Azrael mori,' goes the Latin.)
Next they used a sophisticated attack plan using the wind,
napalm, and tear gas to drive the Smurf villagers into a
trap.
The strapped all the healthy males (i.e., no Papa Smurf) into
specially constructed chairs in a large chamber. The chairs
include a small radio-controlled electric-shock-treatment
suppository and a minaturized breast pump from a milking
machine, which works over the blue thing's boner.
The original plan DAP(tm) had was to use anal shocks to
cause ejaculation, a technique employed by some sperm banks,
while also milking the 'three apple high' males for all
their worth. Then they hit upon the plan of getting
Smurfette addicted to crack, so that they could force her to
striptease for the strapping males, to keep the flagging
flagpoles from a flaccid state. She's pretty good at too,
almost a limber as a contortionist, and somewhat coy from
her natural reluctance. If she were human, I'd be first in
line to line her g-string with a dead president or two.
And here's where it gets ugly. DAP(tm) takes this collected
Smurfy Juice, adds some carageenan as a thickener and sells
it to you as Fun Tak(tm). Yes, that's right, you have stuck
things to your walls with the sperm of Smurfs. Your posters
have become discolored because Smurf semen held them to the
wall. That gooey blue stuff you played with using your bare
hands was produced in the hairless and wrinkle-free scrotum
of a prisoner Smurf.
I warned you it would be unpleasant, but 'Let each become
aware.'"
"Their SMTP server rejects everything. In a stunning imitation of a
tech support drone, it ignores everything you say and simply reads
its script:
Trying 64.94.110.11...
Connected to sitefinder-idn.verisign.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 snubby1-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
foo
250 OK
bar
250 OK
bz
550 User domain does not exist.
asdf
250 OK
fdas
221 snubby1-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing
transmission channel
Connection closed by foreign host."
-- Ben Rosengart's observation on the Verisign *.com. MX host
"Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollack, isn't it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The
hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The
predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity
like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with
nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless
bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday night?"
-- Bo Bradham (bradham@panix)
"BR: Seriously though, I hope you're paid well for reading this stuff, it
BR: has worse eye-glaze potential than anything I've read except for tax
BR: forms.
MS: Read this stuff? I write it, but I *certainly* don't read
MS: it. That crap will kill you.
BR: That <click> you just heard is a light bulb going on above my head.
MS: The standards process in a nutshell."
-- From panix.user.unix, 23 Oct 2003,
BR: Ben Rosengart
MS: Melinda Shore
-------------- t h e f t s s e c t i o n -------------------
The following quotes have been stolen from Faisal's
quote file.
"No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at
least one woman."
-Honore de Balzac
"Windoze is the Mac interface done by people with Crayolas instead of
rapidiographs."
-barnhill@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
"The employer generally gets the employees he deserves."
-Walter Bilbey
"As a woman, I find it very embarrassing to be in a meeting and realize
I'm the only one in the room with balls."
-Rita Mae Brown
"For nothing in this world can you trust ... not man, not woman, not
beast ... *this* you can trust."
-Conan the Barbarian on his sword
"I have *always* thought of Wean as just one big, huge concrete canvas."
-Nathan Loofborrow
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky
that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am
become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting "The Bhagavad Gita", 1945
"Never write it in C if you can do it in 'awk'; Never do it in 'awk' if
'sed' can handle it; Never use 'sed' when 'tr' can do the job;
Never invoke 'tr' when 'cat' is sufficient; Avoid using 'cat'
whenever possible."
-Taylor's Laws of Programming
"[MS-DOS is] an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern
kitchen appliances would sneer at."
-Dave Trowbridge
"I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution."
-Wernher von Braun
"Sex with Rachel was great. It was amazing. It was like a concert, it
really was. She screamed a lot. And threw frisbees around the
room. And when she wanted more, she'd light a match."
-Steven Wright
"Of course it has civilian applications. You might wanna kill your
friends, someday."
-Jim Zelenka
"Tim Pierce... trisexual: men, women, and computers."
-unknown
"Well-known saying : 'First thing we do is to shoot all the lawyers.'
Have you noticed how many Gun Control Bills there are these
days...?"
-unknown