Freebsd Fortunes

        "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
        "No," said GoodGulf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:

        "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
        Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
        Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
        This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
        The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
        The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
        If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
        If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
                -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

        I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
leads to violence.  What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
library, we could call each other up:

     You: Hello?  Bob?
     Bob: Yes?
     You: This is Ed.  Remember?  The person whose parking space you
          took last Thursday?  Outside of Sears?
     Bob: Oh yes!  Sure!  How are you, Ed?
     You: Fine, thanks.  Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
          "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..."  No, wait.
          I mean:  "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
          and ..."  No, wait.  (Sound of reference book thudding onto
          the floor.)  S-word.  Excuse me.  Look, Bob, I'm going to
          have to get back to you.
     Bob: Fine.
                -- Dave Barry, "$#$

#^

!^

&@

@!"

        "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
        Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't --
till I tell you.  I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
        "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
        "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
        "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
        "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"

        "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"

        If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle.  So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it.  The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
        And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I.  How
difficult can it be?"
        Very difficult.  In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself.  There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money.  This article can help you.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

        In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
junior, what are you up to?"
        "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
        "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
        "Well, follow me and I'll show you."  They both go into the
rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
expression on his face.
        Comes along a wolf.  "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
        "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
devour wolves."
        "Are you crazy?  Where is your academic honesty?"
        "Come with me and I'll show you."  As before, the rabbit comes
out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.

The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that really counts.