Freebsd Fortunes 5

Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
                -- H.L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan,
                   counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution
                   law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.

Once I finally figured out all of life's
answers, they changed the questions.

Once, I read that a man be never stronger
than when he truly realizes how weak he is.
                -- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel #31"

Once is happenstance,
Twice is coincidence,
Three times is enemy action.
                -- Auric Goldfinger

Once it hits the fan, the only rational choice is to
sweep it up, package it, and sell it as fertilizer.

Once Law was sitting on the bench
        And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
        Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
        "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
        "Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can
grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it
possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
                -- Rainer Rilke

Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.
                -- H.R. Haldeman

Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
        And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this:  "panic: never doubt",
        And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
        Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!

Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem.  You see, during
a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin
parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around.  So,
to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the
end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the
page of the score before the bass cue.  As the basses grew more and more
inebriated, two of them fell asleep.  The conductor grew quite nervous (he
was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth;
the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.