Freebsd Fortunes

        After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven.  As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
        "This is true," He replied.
        "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
        "What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
        "Oh, no!"  Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
        It was so granted.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

        An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean.  He
knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
great restraint.
        As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
embellishment after embellishment occur to him.  These get stored away
to be used "next time".  Sooner or later the first system is finished,
and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
        This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
        The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one.  The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
                -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

        An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
        "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this.  Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour.  But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
        The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

        "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
        "Diet."

        Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
followers.
        One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
        "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile?  What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
        Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU".  (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
        Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
        Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
                -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"

        COMMENT

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
                -- Dorothy Parker

        Deck Us All With Boston Charlie

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
                -- Walt Kelly

        During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall.  Suddenly a
red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
"Hey, you almost hit my wife."
        "Did I?"  cried the hunter, aghast.  "Terribly sorry.  Have a
shot at mine, over there."

        Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking.  Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour.  This is very fast.  In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
        The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European.  Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction.  This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

        Excellence is THE trend of the '80s.  Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
                -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"