The right girl is the one who feels the same way about you - Jackie Williams ===== A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in email? ===== Trust the computer industry to shorten Year 2000 to Y2K. It was this thinking that caused the problem in the first place. ===== I don't think the solution is simple, in the sense that I can't say 'The solution is blah', where 'blah' is something simple. - Mark Warren ===== "When Donald Duck gets hit over the head with a brick he's up and walking in the next frame. In my pictures, when Donald Duck gets hit over the head with a brick, he's in the hospital for six months, he has a brain tumour and he remembers the event for the rest of his life. That sense of confrontation is deeply disturbing." - Peter Greenaway ===== Run me a bath, then plug me in, I'm like a TV learning to swim. - Babybird, "Goodnight" ===== You want affection, get a cat. You want unconditional adoration, get a dog. You want verifiable fidelity, get a goldfish, but don't let anyone else feed it. jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) ===== "If you believe in light, it's because of obscurity; if you believe in joy, it's because of sadness; and if you believe in God, it's because of the Devil" - Enigma, MCMXC a.D. ===== There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. ===== Just another irregular verb... I am a freedom fighter You are a terrorist He is an innocent bystander We destroy the evil forces of oppression You commit acts of unspeakable barbarity They are colateral damage Hugh Ainsley (Subterranea Britannica) ===== The meaning of life is that it ends. - Brian Kendig (bskendig@netcom.com) ===== "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso ===== And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. ===== The Professor Of English stood before his class, and declaimed "Two negatives can make a positive, but two positives can never make a negative!" From the back of the class, a student muttered, "Yeah, right!" ===== The Internet perceives censorship as damage, and routes around it. John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation ===== Motorist Philip Peters said he was stunned to be ticketed after council contractors painted double yellow lines under his car. The workers winched his car off the ground to enable them to paint the lines. As there were no offical signs showing the new parking restrictions on display in the vicinity the council agreed to cancel the ticket. ===== If winning is not important, then why keep score? - Worf ===== "And now on BBC2, `A Time to Increase Ratings'. Viewers should be warned that this drama contains scenes of explicit audience-grabbing..." (WeekEnding, Radio 4) ===== It takes 42 muscles to frown, 28 to smile and only 4 to extend my arm and smack someone in the mouth. ===== You can't have everything - where would you put it? ===== Tom Baker came to my house the other day, glanced into a room that's a complete mess and said, "That looks like my mind." Vic Reeves ===== The trouble with resisting temptation is that it may never come your way again. ===== "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." - Dean Martin ===== "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen." - Albert Einstein ===== "The Macintosh has got the most scrambled, inconsistent, confusing user interface in the world, except for all other computer systems." Bruce Tognazzini ===== Reality is a State of Mind ===== No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt ===== "Parents of young organic life forms are warned that towels can be harmful if swallowed in large quantities" ===== "We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However when you start from zero, it takes a long time." - Stephen Yeo, marketing director at Wyse ===== Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself. ===== Q: How do you tell a field service engineer with a puncture? A: He's the one swapping tyres to see which one's the flat. Q: How do you tell a field service engineer who's run out of petrol? A: He's the one swapping tyres to see which one's the flat. ===== I said "Do you speak my language?"; he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich. - Men at Work, "Down Under" ===== Opinions are divided between the conspiracy theory of history and the cock up theory. I subscribe to the view that most of history can be explained by attempted conspiracies which were cocked up. - Mikefule ===== "It's state-of-the-art" "But it doesn't work!" "That is the state-of-the-art". ===== The difference between theory and real life is that in theory, there is no difference between theory and real life, but in real life, there is a difference. ===== Civilization is just a temporary failure of entropy. ===== "PC Owner?", 'Yes', "Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each." ===== Nothing is forgotten; nothing is ever forgotten. - RoS ===== ... everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed ... ===== "At Microsoft we are very conscious of the importance of accessibility issues, not only for people of different nationalities, but for people with other disabilities too" - Shawn Burke, Microsoft Tech Ed 2001 ===== "I think that the surest signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin to Hobbes ===== There is no truth to the rumour that Lotus are suing Apple for copying the look and feel of their lawsuits. ===== If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it till it does, then shoot it till it stops. ===== "Can you make that, a simple candle, from scratch? We're of the generation that put a man on the moon, but all we can really do is talk about making stone tools." -- Survivors? ===== "I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use." - Galileo ===== Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today. Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better. ===== "Lots of things have changed since 1991, and Visual Basic's no different" - Microsoft 'This Week!' newsletter ===== Why can't a computer scientist tell Halloween from Christmas? Because oct(31)=dec(25) ===== Being cheeky is one thing; being cheeky, accurate and pertinent is another. - Pete Howard ===== A smart fly believes there is safety in numbers. It lets the other flies test all the new areas before it lands or eats. The fly circles the room, refusing the many 'flylicious' places to land and dine because it doesn't see other flies there - an obvious sign of danger. Out of its multi-faceted eyes, this smart fly spies a cornucopia of proven success. Hundreds of flies congregating in an evidently sound, and very safe area. The smart fly happily joins them. And dies on the flypaper. ===== May All Your Good Dreams and Fine Wishes Come True - Mike Jittlov ===== Violets are red Roses are blue It's amazing what DNA splicing can do. ===== Tourist to small boy: Does it ever stop raining in Scotland? Small boy: I don't know, I'm only 13. ===== "Life isn't too short, it's just that death is too long." - seen on a T-shirt at Phoenix '94 ===== For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong. (H. L. Mencken) ===== On a final note, I saw a 16-valve Skoda the other day.... trouble is that eight of the valves were in the radio :-) -- dave@llondel.demon.co.uk (David Hough) ===== "It's another of those irregular verbs, isn't it? I hold confidential press briefings, you leak, he is being charged under Section Seven of the Official Secrets Act" - Bernard, "Yes Prime Minister" ===== "I don't think it's not doing what you think it's doing at all" - Tony Rogers ===== Baldrick, believe me: eternity in the company of Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death will be a picnic compared to five minutes with *me* and this pencil... ===== "Well, in those days men were real men, women were real women and small furry animals were real small furry animals. You knew were you stood. And if you didn't know where you stood, you renamed it and claimed it for Queen and Country, and everyone knew where you had stood. Nowadays with homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites and bestiality, I'm beginning to think that men are real women, women are real men and small furry animals are real scared." adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt) ===== "The entire world revolves around this wretched Alien." -H.R. Giger ===== at Christmas, my daughter and I decorated our porch with lights. we came home one day to find half-a-dozen of the bulbs removed and smashed on the sidewalk. she, 6 yrs old, was broken-hearted, but I said we could replace the lights. some things are so simple. the next day, a dozen of the lights were smashed, and she was devastated. it was the first time in her life that she had experienced such wanton violent disregard for her feelings. "how", she asked, "could any person do such a thing?" the long and short of it was that we found out it was the neighbour's boy, also 6. and he was then required to apologise directly to my daughter, and he proceeded to do so in the fashion of all children who don't want to apologise. he stared at the floor, and said "I'm sorry.". and my daughter looked him straight in the eye and said, "sometimes sorry's not enough", and she turned and left. once you decide to break something, be sure you will be prepared to forego forgiveness. From: robd@cray.com (Robert Derrick) ===== Circles of the human chain Turning for the wheels of gain A system with a power of its own To draw blood from a stone Every hour like the last Tomorrow like the day just passed Bearing down upon the flesh and bone To draw blood from a stone Cold machines that never stop Even if a man should drop Mercy never lets her face be shown They draw blood from a stone "Blood From A Stone" - Metropolis ===== If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD40. ===== To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the IT guy, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. ===== It's not a disagreement - I just have a credibility problem with his advice. - Pete Howard ===== "Imagine an actor saying the following: "Imagine me saying the following: "When Debussy died on March 25th 1918 in Paris, it was being bombarded by the Germans. And it was raining.""" - Art of Noise ===== Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo ===== My sister's kid said his first word today. Cthulhu. Those hours of training really paid off. She wants to kill me now. Oh, and I've also taught him how to untie people's shoes while he's playing at their feet. I love being an uncle. - pariah@poe.org ===== One of the prettiest things I ever heard was a story someone related to me about childhood monsters. I had this friend in New Orleans who was going to Tulane at the time, and she got into a conversation with a friend about monsters at the end of the bed, and how sometimes it still scared her to turn out the light because she always had this one particular monster as a child that she dreaded. She'd turn out the light and just know that her monster would be standing at the foot of her bed watching her, and it terrified her. Her friend asked her if she knew _why_ the monster stood at the foot of her bed every night. She said because he was a monster and he got off on scaring little kids. Her friend said no, he's standing there because he loves you. ===== The real world does not have a killfile. ===== David: Have you heard about the new Scooby-Doo movie? It's got Sarah Michelle Gellar in it. Me: Er, is she Buffy? David: Oh yes, she's *very* buffy. ===== Of course everyone is normal, you doofus. People have bills to pay, and children to take care of, and dreams to follow-- they can't all be hopeless romantics like us. You aren't going to find that mystery person whilst sitting on a park bench. Move around! You're looking in the wrong places. Bookstores! And I don't mean mall bookstores, I mean places like Barnes and Nobles, that have a real selection of books and magazines. Find a proper chair near the magazine rack, whip out a notebook, and start taking notes on the people who browse the magazines. Eventually, someone will wander up who fits the criteria you are looking for. Make definite eye contact with them, and when they notice you looking at them, turn away and *furiously* scribble some notation about them in your notebook. If they are nearly as adventurous as you want, they *will* confront you to see what you had just written. Take it from there. Buy them coffee. Buy them a torte from the bakery. Don't buy them meat (bad manners on a first encounter heheh). Just make sure you get their attention and do something that will drive them insane if they don't know why you did it. As stupid as this sounds, it works. I am a staunch believer in forcing people to enter my life by playing upon their curiosity. You do so yourself -- black roses to complete strangers. Of course, roses are nice, but so over rated. Try wildflowers on the dashboard of their car, or even better, a pot of soil and a bag of wildflower seeds. Now THAT one worked like you would not believe. Not only did she love wildflowers, but she had just taken up gardening as a way to combat some stress in her life. I gave her the perfect gift -- attention. She gave me the first batch of wildflowers she grew -- in a window box with a note to buy more seeds =) Don't wait for your life to evolve. Force it to. No one ever made progress with both feet firmly planted on the ground. Life is hell, and it will continue to be so unless you quit dreaming and start acting, to make those dreams happen.... - d8i3@hotmail.com ===== Life _is_ pain Anyone that says anything else is either lying, Or trying to sell something. - Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess Bride ===== If at first you fail, cheat. Repeat until caught, then lie. ===== Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up it is perfect. - Linus Torvalds ===== Anyone who says they're not afraid of death hasn't understood the question. - Richard Loxley =====