fortune

Jesus died for your sins. Make it worth his time.


The idea is to die young as late as possible.
– Ashley Montagu


Truthful, adj.:
Dumb and illiterate.
– Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary”


“I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.”
– Art Leo


I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
– Spider Robinson


God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.


Once … in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
– W. C. Fields, “My Little Chickadee”


Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.


Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks?
“Is it PC compatible?”


“The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about drugs.'
– Roy Blount, Jr.


Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.


Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
– Patrick Sky


Command, n.:
Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.


Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.


Wasting time is an important part of living.


California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.
– Fred Allen


If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
– Ann Edwards-Duff


If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
– Derek Bok, president of Harvard


“Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.”
– Lily Tomlin


“MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.”
– Winston Churchill


Gifts for Men

Men are amused by almost any idiot thing – that is why professional ice hockey is so popular – so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him (“You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?”). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires.
– Dave Barry, “Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide”


One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.


A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.


Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.


I'd like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he's working on now.


Never let your schooling interfere with your education.


Hlade's Law:
If You have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person – they will findan easier way to do it.


People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.


The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
– Noelie Alito


Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.


Support bacteria – it's the only culture some people have!


“Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.”
– Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal


Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.


When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, “Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?” He answered, “If the zoo wants you let them come and get you.”
– Jerry Lewis


Hardware, n.:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.


The best defense against logic is ignorance.


Save the whales. Collect the whole set.


Schizophrenia beats being alone.


Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
– H. H. Munroe


USER, n.:
The word computer professionals use when they mean “idiot.”
– Dave Barry, “Claw Your Way to the Top”


I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.


The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that … The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed … [However] Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
– From “Applied Optics” vol. 11, A14, 1972


Get forgiveness now – tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.


God must love assholes – She made so many of them.


To make a mistake is human, but to really fuck things up, you need a computer.


How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
– Elliot, “E.T.”


Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.


“Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.”


Painting, n.:
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
– Ambrose Bierce


“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
– Emo Phillips


“No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.”


If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
– Pope John Paul I


“I drink to make other people interesting.”
– George Jean Nathan


fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
“Hey you, get off my plate”
– Roger Midnight


Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
– Dave Barry, “Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide”


Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite goverment program.


A bureaucracy is like a septic tank – all the really big shits float on the top.


Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excelent place for it.


The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do