Freebsd Fortunes 6

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
                -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His father called him, but he could not go,
For he loved those peanuts so.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment
you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.

The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
        To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
        program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
        one, and convert to the next higher units.

The British are coming!  The British are coming!

The broad mass of a nation... will more easily
fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
                -- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream; it is a most depressing
and humiliating reality.
                -- Oscar Wilde

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a
digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top
of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.  To think otherwise is to demean
the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself.
                -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

The bugs you have to avoid are the ones that give the user not only
the inclination to get on a plane, but also the time.
                -- Kay Bostic

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ.  by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."

Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:

        It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
        at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
        wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
        lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
        flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.