Freebsd Fortunes 2

        Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack.  Jack and his relations were poor.  Often their
hash table was bare.  One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse.  You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs."  She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
        So Jack set out.  But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
        "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
        "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
        "I have a much better algorithm.  You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
        Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house.  But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
        "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence?  All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window...
                -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"

        Looking for a cool one after a long, dusty ride, the drifter strode
into the saloon.  As he made his way through the crowd to the bar, a man
galloped through town screaming, "Big Mike's comin'!  Run fer yer lives!"
        Suddenly, the saloon doors burst open.  An enormous man, standing over
eight feet tall and weighing an easy 400 pounds, rode in on a bull, using a
rattlesnake for a whip.  Grabbing the drifter by the arm and throwing him over
the bar, the giant thundered, "Gimme a drink!"
        The terrified man handed over a bottle of whiskey, which the man
guzzled in one gulp and then smashed on the bar.  He then stood aghast as
the man stuffed the broken bottle in his mouth, munched broken glass and
smacked his lips with relish.
        "Can I, ah, uh, get you another, sir?" the drifter stammered.
        "Naw, I gotta git outa here, boy," the man grunted.  "Big Mike's
a-comin'."

        Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."

        Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
        These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.  Don't
hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.   Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and cold milk are good
for you.  Live a balanced life.  Learn some and think some and draw and paint
and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
        Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  Remember the
little seed in the plastic cup.   The roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.  Goldfish and
hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all
die.  So do we.
        And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you
learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK.  Everything you need to know is in
there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and
politics and sane living.
        Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world
-- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankets for a nap.  Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other
nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own
messes.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into
the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
                -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned
                   in kindergarten"

        Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to
do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom  was not at the top
of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
        These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.
Don't hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your
own mess.  Don't take things that aren't yours.  Say you're sorry when you
hurt someone.  Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and
cold milk are good for you.  Live a balanced life.  Learn some and think
some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day
some.
        Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch
for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  Remember
the little seed in the plastic cup.  The roots go down and the plant goes
up and nobody really knows why, but we are all like that.
[...]
        Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole
world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay
down with our blankets for a nap.   Or if we had a basic policy in our nation
and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned
up our own messes.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when
you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
                -- Robert Flughum

        Mother seemed pleased by my draft notice.  "Just think of all the
people in England, they've chosen you, it's a great honour, son."
        Laughingly I felled her with a right cross.
                -- Spike Milligan

        Moving along a dimly light street, a man I know was suddenly
approached by a stranger who had slipped from the shadows nearby.
        "Please, sir," pleaded the stranger, "would you be so kind as
to help a poor unfortunate fellow who is hungry and can't find work?
All I have in the world is this gun."

        Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan.  The
company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent
defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
        The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per
cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
                -- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail

        Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile.
Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures.  One day,
without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation.  In
an instant, armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to
prison.
        They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports
in their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get
them to name their contacts in the liberation movement...  Finally they're
hauled in front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced
to death.
        The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll
be shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have
any last requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in
Chicago.  The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to
Murray.
        "This is crazy!" Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he
spits in the sergeants face.
        "Murray!" Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
                -- Arthur Naiman

        My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as
Africa.  Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa.  Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule:  Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00.  Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30.  Now Africa is full of big game.  The first day I shot two bucks.  That
was the biggest game we had.  Africa is primarily inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
        The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions.  And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water.  They
weren't looking for a water hole.  They were looking for an alck hole.
        One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know.  Then we tried to remove the tusks.  That's a tough
word to say, tusks.  As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out.  But in Alabama the Tusks are
looser, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
        We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
                -- Julius H. Marx