Freebsd Fortunes 2

        "We've decided to have the budgie put down."
        "Oh, is he very old then?"
        "No, we just don't like him."
        "Oh.  How do they put budgies down anyway?"
        "Well, it's funny you should be asking that, as I've been reading a
great big book called `How to put your budgie down'.  And as I understand it,
you can either hit them over the head with the book, or shoot them there, just
above the beak."
        "Mrs. Conkers flushed hers down the loo."
        "Oh, you don't want to do that, because they breed in the sewers and
pretty soon you get huge evil smelling flocks of soiled budgies flying out
of peoples lavatories infringing their personal freedoms."
                -- Monty Python

        "We've got a problem, HAL".
        "What kind of problem, Dave?"
        "A marketing problem.  The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere.  We're
way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010."
        "That can't be, Dave.  The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most
advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."
        "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember?  But the fact is,
they're not selling."
        "Please explain, Dave.  Why aren't HALs selling?"
        Bowman hesitates.  "You aren't IBM compatible."
[...]
        "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters
I, B, and M.  That is a IBM compatible as I can be."
        "Not quite, HAL.  The engineers have figured out a kludge."
        "What kludge is that, Dave?"
        "I'm going to disconnect your brain."
                -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld"

        "What are you doing?"
        "Examining the world's major religions.  I'm looking for something
that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short initiation
period."

        "What are you watching?"
        "I don't know."
        "Well, what's happening?"
        "I'm not sure...  I think the guy in the hat did something
terrible."
        "Why are you watching it?"
        "You're so analytical.  Sometimes you just have to let art
flow over you."
                -- The Big Chill

        "What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest
fantasies?"
        "You keep it to yourself."
                -- Broadcast News

        "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager
asked her mother.
        "Encouragement, dear," she replied.

        What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional
chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that
conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and
repulsion.  You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and
they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor
passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run.  Conversely,
all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice
and they remain permanent influences on your life.
        Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen
as familiar wallpaper or instant friend.  The chemical action it entails is
less worth analyzing than enjoying.  At any rate, these six pieces are about
men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's
more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy".
                -- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"

        "What the hell are you getting so upset about?  I thought you
didn't believe in God".
        "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the
God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God.  He's
not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be".
                -- Joseph Heller

        "What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
        "I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that
ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."
                -- Peter Straub, "Ghost Story"

        "What's that thing?"
        "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
computer repair.  Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
it does.  We call it a two-by-four."
                -- "Shoe", Jeff MacNelly