====================================================== | Paul Morrison's Page of Collected Internet Quotes | ====================================================== | The latest version can always be found at: | | http://users.iafrica.com/p/pf/pfm/quotes.txt | ====================================================== Welcome to my collection of humorous quotes harvested from the Internet. This used to contain both serious and funny quotes, but I have split the two files. The serious quotes can be found at: http://users.iafrica.com/p/pf/pfm/squotes.txt Feedback can be sent to paulmorrison@gmail.com Some quotes are actually a sequence of posts and replies from newsgroups, in this situation the hierarchy of the posts is indicated by the default '>' character, and combinations thereof. Please remember that I have copied the quotes exactly. The spelling mistakes contained below are the original words used. Its knot me hew is a badd spelur. The newest quotes appear at the top of this page. Latest quote added on: 2009/11/30 ~ Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat. - Brian Cox ~ As the Archbishop of Canterbury likes to say: "That's enough tedious wank. Let's party!" - Stephen Fry ~ Front row on top of a double-decker + drunk = AWESOME - Rebecca Watson ~ I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui. - Charlie Brooker ~ I'm giving a talk as part of Mathias Klang's information security course at the University of Gothenburg. The theme is "Årtusendenas glömska: arkivsäkring i det riktigt långa perspektivet", which may hint to the intelligent reader that I'll be speaking in Swedish. - Martin Rundkvist ~ There's no quantifying the ways in which human beings can be stupid. - Alexei Sayle ~ Bonfire Night is so commercial now, let's not forget the true meaning. The brutal punitive mutilation of a Catholic terrorist called Guido. - Simon Pegg ~ I'm told you can find footage of people actually taking their clothes off – and occasionally doing racier stuff, like kissing – elsewhere on the internet. - Charlie Brooker ~ Looking forward to Bleak Expectations tonight 6.30 Radio 4. It's very funny. I'm not in it. If you link those facts you're no friend of mine. - David Mitchell ~ I had a lovely letter the other day from very religious lady concerned about my health. She said that I should consider my Alzheimer's a gift from God. Frankly, I would have preferred a sweater... - Terry Pratchett ~ Do not ever, ever, under any circumstances, allow yourself to read a book with Gentry Lee as an author. Ever. Even if you are somehow paid to do so. His work is memetic poison that's even worse for your tender brain than the Velikovskian rantings of later James Hogan. Its sheer awfulness is so powerful that there is a nontrivial chance that you might undergo spontaneous combustion just so your brain doesn't have to see any more of it. It turned me into a newt. - Jim Battista, not a fan of Gentry Lee ~ The point of this blog entry isn't really to debate the topic, though. It's to reprint the opening paragraph of Sawyer's essay, which I've never forgotten: "Whenever I visit a tourist attraction that has a guest register, I always sign it. After all, you never know when you'll need an alibi." Since I read that, whenever I see a tourist attraction with a guest register, I do the same thing. I sign "Robert J. Sawyer, Toronto, ON" -- because you never know when he'll need an alibi. - Bruce Schneier, pointing out a flaw in someone else's idea ~ As a news source, Fox is about as plausible and useful as an episode of Thundercats. - Charlie Brooker ~ I don’t see what the big deal is about God making the Ark into a TARDIS as well, so it could hold as many animals as necessary without having to be as long as HMS Dreadnought, and much wider. This whole subject is a bit like discovering that there are people developing serious theories about how it was that Little Red Riding Hood failed to recognise a wolf dressed as her grandma, or calculating exactly how large a cottage could be built out of gingerbread. - Daniel Rutter ~ On the plus side, I know how to fall now and what to do when I notice I am on fire. - James Nicoll, on his accident-prone childhood ~ Youth will not save you from Newton's Laws. Or Darwin's. - James Nicoll ~ Move *away* from mysterious burglar alarms. - James Nicoll ~ Never take the lid of a pressure cooker 'to see if it's done yet'. - James Nicoll ~ Pure reason does not trump brute force but suprisingly few people know what hot peppers look like when the teacher asks if you have enough to share with everyone. - James Nicoll ~ Trebuchets are for outside use only. - James Nicoll ~ If you don't remember how you got on the ground or where the blood came from, don't get up right away. - James Nicoll ~ Clotheslines are the enemy of the bicyclist. - James Nicoll ~ Just because the snow keeps you from seeing other objects the objects do not cease to exist. - James Nicoll ~ Fire is not necessarily your friend. Neither are dogs. - James Nicoll ~ Boy, do you get funny looks when you explain that yes, you cut yourself again showing someone how you did it the first time. - James Nicoll ~ I seem to be either Avoidable Accident Lad or perhaps Near Death Experience [Own Fault] Boy. - James Nicoll ~ It's harder to cut your throat fatally than they make it look in movies. I bet I could try a hundred times and not succeed more than once. - James Nicoll ~ New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. You know, if conservatives get to call universal healthcare "socialized medicine," I get to call private, for-profit healthcare "soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain." - Bill Maher ~ Ask not what SF can do for you but what you can do for SF! We choose to read these books, we choose to read these books in this bookstore and do the other things like watch SF on TV not because they literary but because they are hard SF. - Steven Gross ~ If you can't be a good example you have an obligation to be a horrible warning. - Unknown ~ I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' — there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out. - Frank Zappa ~ Dropping dead is a serious side-effect. - Steve Novella ~ I think you should be allowed to own a Humvee, I just think that when you go to buy it, like when you sign it, so that it's yours, you just get hit in the back of the head with a roll of fuckin' quarters in a sock, then just wake up in Iraq with a gun and they go, 'Oh yeah, you have to get the oil yourself. You can drive it all you want, you just have to get the gasoline by yourself.' - Patton Oswalt ~ Dating is a fun nightmare. It's a nightmare, and then there are boners in it somehow. - Patton Oswalt ~ Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, after all. What if I accidentally kickstart the first world war all over again through sheer ignorance? That wouldn't look good on anyone's CV. - Charlie Brooker ~ Everyone knows that booze is the best medicine, followed closely by penicillin, then more booze, then chemotherapy, and then laughter. - Rebecca Watson ~ I think it’s obvious that in some very fundamental ways I’m still twelve years old. - John Scalzi ~ New Rule: If the Republicans really want to approve a measure officially renaming the Democrats the "Nationalist Socialist Democrat Party," then the Democrats get to rename the Republicans the "Sweet Jesus, Are These People F*cking Serious?!" Party. - Bill Maher ~ For the record, I'm not calling Britney fat as much as a chocolate-loving leviathan of dumb. Just so we're clear. - thesuperficial.com ~ Based on my understanding, lesbians are supposed to be attracted to women. So why do they always end up dating ones that look like men? - thesuperficial.com ~ I don't think we're likely to get much more than a terabit per second of bandwidth out of any channel, be it wireless or a fibre-optic cable, because once you get into soft X-rays your network card becomes indistinguishable from a death ray... - Charlie Stross ~ Note that the American moon race, from the day of Kennedy’s challenge to the point where Neil Armstrong climbed out of Eagle and went frolicking around Mare Tranquillitatis, took less time than it took to not make Duke Nukem Forever. - Shamus Young ~ Yes, I was also soundly whipped by a hot woman in a pirate get-up. Oh, it was terrible. Terrible, do you hear me. You could hardly hear my screams over the sound of my wife pointing and laughing. - John Scalzi, describing part of a convention appearance ~ I am terrifyingly beautiful. People often scream and hurl themselves under passing trucks the moment they spot my physical splendour gliding towards them. Embittered naysayers may claim my face resembles a damp curtain billowing in the squall of a bison fart, but these people have neither eyes nor souls. Let's be honest. I make David Beckham look like a sockful of piss. - Charlie Brooker, being modest ~ If zombies twittered they would be all " fskjishvvuhuds" and "ssjklivosjxlmvb", and "need lawyer now"... - Roxanne Dunning ~ Chuck Norris has never had much of an ability to sustain a coherent argument. Hell, maybe it's unfair to expect him to do so, like expecting Steven Hawking to do push-ups. - Ed Brayton ~ I never read the Qur’an on the toilet, but I did read it drunk a few times. My housemates and I would knock a few back and open it to a random passage, then try to read it in the most ominous sounding voice we could. That’s probably against the rules. - Elliot Callahan ~ Anything called a 'tincture' isn't going to fucking work. - Richard Herring, on Prince Charles endorsing yet more bogus medicines ~ I've also been promoted to "leading American evolutionary biologist", which will surprise leading American evolutionary biologist everywhere, but which will look wonderfully pretentious on my CV. - P.Z. Myers, commenting on The Guardian's description of him ~ As far as I’m concerned the past can go to hell. I’m only putting up with the present until something better comes along. - James K ~ One frequent motif recurs in creationist email: they may believe in god, but they don't believe in paragraphs. - P.Z. Myers ~ Hmmm... I just seem to have made myself a quadruple espresso... Maybe I will now have a very productive morning... - Brad DeLong ~ It is debatable whether Bush was in fact a moron, but it is undeniable that he played one exceptionally well. - Vjack ~ Jeff Buckley and John Coltrane die prematurely. Celine Dion does not. I believe there is no justice in the universe. - Chez Pazienza ~ Folks, There are times when the phrase “Absolutely, totally, gobsmackingly, mindbogglingly amazed” just doesn’t cover it, but I find that in the Queen’s New Year Honours list I am now a Knight, for services to literature. This means that fans, while not calling me Sir, must now refrain from throwing things. Regrettably, no sword is included in the box :) What more can a modest Knight say? - Terry Pratchett, on being awarded a knighthood ~ Retailers should also know that men can only ever buy what they want “now”. It is why, whenever I’m sent to a supermarket to do the weekly shop, I only ever buy what I want at that precise moment. So instead of getting six bumper packs of bog roll and four trays of dog food, I come home with one tube of Smarties. - Jeremy Clarkson ~ And oh look, the History Channel has a show called UFO Hunters, because nothing says accurate historical scholarship like a weekly search for things that maybe don’t exist. - Rebecca Watson ~ God bless us, everyone! And of course, by “God” I mean “the Universe” and by “bless” I mean “not kill” and by “everyone” I mean “everyone but my enemies.” - Rebecca Watson ~ If you, under any circumstances, see "Little Indian, Big City," I will never let you read one of my reviews again. - Roger Ebert ~ Two things that cannot be convincingly faked are laughter and orgasm. If a movie made you laugh, as a critic you have to be honest and report that. Not so much with orgasms. - Roger Ebert ~ Again we must refer to the scientific phenomenon called People Making Up Bullshit. - Cracked.Com ~ I ran a non-profit business for 10 years. It wasn't supposed to be non-profit... - Tom Ruby ~ Man, it's getting to the point where a fellow can't even build a death ray or an island fortress shaped like a skull without someone getting pissy about it. - P.Z. Myers ~ it's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell the other monkeys where the ripe fruit is. - Terry Pratchett ~ Like Jurassic Park, only boring! - Rebecca Watson, on the possibility of cloning the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker ~ I'm almost 40 years old and still want a lightsaber and a speeder bike. - John Scalzi ~ Yes, America is like Jessica Simpson. Sometimes it's so stupid it embarrasses you, but, on the other hand, how about them titties?! - Bill Maher ~ I am so much a movie lover that I can imagine a certain (very small) pleasure in looking like the Phantom. It is better than looking like the Elephant Man. I would describe my condition as falling about 17% of the way along a graph line between the handsome devil I was at the tender age of 27, and the thing that jumps out of that guy's intestines in "Alien." - Roger Ebert, on his looks post-surgery ~ We all love big numbers, and we’re all fooled by big numbers, because we’re all idiots. That’s why it’s important to think clearly, and ignore all newspapers. - Ben Goldacre, from his newspaper column ~ I don’t care what you say - I’ll put Scottish post-apocalyptic lunatics up against the post-apocalyptic lunatics of any other nation you care to name. - Daniel Rutter ~ We speak differently to lay-people than we do to each other. To management and rival groups it’s “We can predict X at Y to within 0.0001?. To friends and peers it’s more “Fuck, I don’t know what’s wrong. Draw the line through there and make the axes bigger. Christ, What did we do last time?”. - Porphyry ~ Diesel, it says three things about you: one is, you're tighter than two coats of paint, the second one is that you care so much about the environment that you want to leave a little protective sooty film over it, and the third one is, you're probably French. - James May ~ I have Taken To My Bed, like a young lady with a bad case of the vapors in a Victorian novel, although during the waking bits I'm writing Batman in bed, which young ladies in Victorian novels rarely did. - Neil Gaiman ~ I recently learned to touch type so now am capable of making Freudian slips. - I Foody ~ There is a bastard concoction that dares to call itself ‘Vermont Cheddar’ but that we will ignore, presenting it with the coldest of British shoulders. - Stephen Fry ~ You can't be president if you practice a violent Middle Eastern religion and worship a genocidal desert god. Which is why Sarah Palin can't be president. - Bill Maher ~ Faux-punk music would probably be tolerable if it didn't try to bill itself as punk. When Avril Lavigne was labeled "punk," Joe Strummer, in a final show of defiance, died. - Chez Pazienza ~ Jennifer Lopez's disappearance from the music business is proof that there may in fact be a benevolent god. - Chez Pazienza ~ People who claim that vinyl is better than compact disc or digital music should be treated with leeches and trepanation the next time they get sick. - Chez Pazienza ~ Whenever Mercury is in retrograde, my astrologer is completely wrong. - Llewelly ~ Why does everything sound cooler with nano in the name? - Bob Novella ~ working is hard. I don't know how you lot do it! - Richard Herring ~ Every time I put ham on a bagel, I feel… transgressive. - John Scalzi ~ We're discussing the pros, cons and innate weirdness of going to your twenty-year high school reunion. Apparently at hers, she and her husband shared a table with a couple that argued the entire evening; he was a farmer, she was a stay-at-home mom. Eventually, after several drinks, the farmer threatened violence against his timid wife and was forcibly removed from the table. My anchor has just unknowingly convinced me to attend my own reunion next year. - Chez Pazienza ~ I wonder if pirates have an international “Talk Like A Skeptic” day? They’d get to walk around going “Actually…” - Ooxman ~ Uh-oh. Just when we least expected it, a seminar on genre theory broke out online! It’s about what the difference between science fiction and fantasy really is. Call me unbearably shallow, but here’s how you know the difference. You walk up to the main character of the story in question and say: “Hey! Main character! That deus ex machina doodad you have on your belt, does it have, like, a battery?” If he says “Why, yes, there’s a tiny nuclear fuel cell in there that will power this baby for 10,000 planetary revolutions,” well, then, you’ve got some science fiction there. If he says, “Of course not, it was forged in the eternal flames of Mount [insert typewriter spasm here] by the dwarves who serve the elder and/or fallen god [insert second typewriter spasm here], and holds captive his immortal soul” or some such, well, that’s fantasy. Everything else is pretty much elaboration and variation on the point. If the story features a nuclear fuel cell made by the dwarf servants of the dread god Typewriter Spasm, what you’ve got is an editor asleep at the switch. Never fear, he or she will be beaten presently. There. Settled. Now, let’s cure cancer! - John Scalzi ~ I had a banana because having a bowl of cereal was too much damned work. Now, I did have a bowl of cereal for dinner last night. Why? Because it was easier than cooking something. There’s really something wrong with me. - John Scalzi ~ Despite all attempts to a contrary nature in my teen years, the fact is I’m almost pathologically cheerful. We all have our crosses to bear. - John Scalzi ~ > Bah! It's people like you who almost deprived us of three thousand Dune books! But it's the idiots that didn't stop buying them that kept new ones coming out. Yeah, um, sorry about that... - Matt Bowles ~ If the Singularity ever does arrive, I expect it to be plagued by frequent outages and terrible customer service. - Scott Aaronson ~ If I'm going to be blasphemous, I should at least use proper grammar. - Joey Michaels ~ If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. - Richard Dawkins ~ I'm not young enough to know everything. - J.M. Barrie ~ It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true. - Oscar Wilde ~ I can resist everything except temptation. - Oscar Wilde ~ People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately. - Oscar Wilde ~ Anyone remember when the requirements for a game just consisted of having a computer? - Hardware Minded ~ I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult. - Elwyn Brooks White ~ I got to use “Guns” as a double entendre for “breasts”, which I think everyone will agree is the very zenith of sophistication and subtlety. - Shamus Young ~ A kiddywink illness? Bit of a sore throat? Pah. That's how people who've never had tonsillitis tend to think about it. I certainly did. Whereas now, I can confidently report that it's worse - far worse - than international terrorism and child abuse combined. - Charlie Brooker ~ There is a tiny part of me that still applauds the great minds who invented the whoopee cushion. - Roger Ebert ~ There's nothing like working in a restaurant to make you want to autoclave all your food. - Sandra Porter ~ Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don't want to hear. It tells you the truth. And we all know how much that can hurt, don't we, fatso? - Charlie Brooker ~ Knowledge is Power Power Corrupts Study Hard Be Evil - Unknown ~ I love all this non-ironic, non-hypothetical talk of cyborgs and augmented humans. Living in the future rocks. - Solon And Thanks ~ My favorite hallucination: I had a patient who was having severe alcohol withdrawal. He appeared to be getting better. I asked him, "are you seeing anything that just might not really be there?" He said, "Not really. I mean besides those skeletons fighting with swords on the IV pole, I'm good." - Peter Lipson (PalMD) ~ In America, around the 4th of July, a lot of attention gets paid to the danger of fireworks. To be honest, I spend a lot more time trying to figure out how to make fireworks more dangerous than I do trying to make them less dangerous. - Rob Cockerham ~ These are shots of Amy Winehouse going on a one-beehive bar tour immediately after leaving a drug and alcohol abuse center. Obviously, they have a very effective program. No, really, I'm serious. She actually used the door this time instead of bursting through the wall screaming "ARGH! AMY LOVES BOOZE! BOOZE LOVE AMY?" - thesuperficial.com ~ MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? - Dave Barry ~ Stephen Baldwin says he'll leave the country if Barack Obama is elected president. I'm not sure if that's a threat or a promise. - Chez Pazienza ~ The experience is rapidly so impressive you start to salute each fact. The protons will make the 27km circuit 11,000 times every second. The accelerator tube will be the coldest place in the universe. We are making the coldest place in the universe. You have to salute that with both hands. - Chris Morris, visiting CERN ~ Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you're going west. - Bill Watterson, said by Calvin's Dad ~ I was up until 3am, at which time I discovered I was drinking something bright blue called an "Adios, Motherfucker", which seemed like an appropriate time to finally drag myself off to bed. - P.Z. Myers, attending The Amazing Meeting ~ HULK SEE MOVIE, HULK LIKE SMASH THINGS, HULK F5 NEURONS EXHIBIT ABOVE-BASELINE BOLD ACTIVITY. - A. Ross Otto ~ Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. - Niels Bohr ~ I once came second in a Brad Pitt lookalike competition. A Japanese guy won it. - Harry Hutton ~ I’ve often wondered how much all of the overanalysis and complication of religion came from the then-time equivalent of nerds. - Captain Button ~ Britney Spears and Mel Gibson had dinner together Saturday evening. And yet, somehow, during this meeting of the minds cancer wasn't cured. Stunning. - thesuperficial.com ~ I have even read that not sleeping can cause you to gain weight, especially if you get out of bed in the middle of the night to eat a chocolate pie. - W. Bruce Cameron ~ > Word. Surely you mean "OpenOffice Writer", my home-dawg? - Thetorpedodog ~ Well I have indisputable proof that healthy living is bad for you. I've been out carousing and behaving like a cock for the last four months and avoided all the many diseases and lurgies that have struck down almost everyone I know. Then I have a week of eating fruit, going to the gym and avoiding booze and bang - I have a minor illness. Fruit and herbal tea are bad for you. QED. - Richard Herring, warping the scientific method ~ When Russia launched Sputnik 50 years ago, it was nothing more than a small radio, but the beeps it transmitted, when translated, told the listening world: “This is Russia and we’d like you all to know that our German scientists are a hell of a lot better than America’s German scientists.” Or, in English: “You’re going home in a f***ing ambulance.” - Jeremy Clarkson ~ I had the day off today. Which in truth means I did pretty much what I do when I am meant to be working, except I don't feel guilty at the end of the day when I have got nothing done. - Richard Herring ~ I think the implication is that Facebook users are innocent and virginal, while Myspace users are murderous sluts. And, as someone with a Myspace profile, I have to concur. - Dersins ~ I've always said I would not never want to live in the US. However, yesterday evening I saw a documentary on TV which made me want to move to Connecticut with Wife & Kids. More precisely, to some quiet peaceful town by the name of er.. what's it called again... ah yes: Stepford. - Jeroen van Baardwijk ~ Oddly, though, in the morning scene in the Inn in the Stardust film, Charlie Cox is wearing a CGI shirt, because there were concerns that his naked torso could bring down America. - Neil Gaiman ~ When the junk shop owner names a price and you immediately smile broadly and say “Sold!”, they know they’ve screwed up. - Daniel Rutter ~ you know what they say, "Small hands, small..." Forget what they say! They are idiots. - Richard Herring, on his hand size ~ Is anyone impressed that as well as talking rubbish all day on here, I'm also spouting rubbish over MSN AND Facebook at the moment? I am THAT good... - Sam Lyon, BBC Sports online cricket commentator ~ As I have learned from commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs, "Priapism" is a medical condition defined by having a painful erection for more than 4 hours. Apparently, I had priapism from age 11 to 17. - Sneeze ~ How can two mathematicians come to a different conclusion? Well, one of them is a dick! - Perry DeAngelis ~ Okay, seriously: what is it with boys and our desires for laser beams and killer robots? I'm thirty-freakin-five and if you gave me a treehouse with a robot right now, I would move out of the fort I built in the living room faster than you can say No Girls Allowed - Wil Wheaton ~ I'd forgotten what Support Desk work was like. It's as if I've come home to stupidity. Would you ring your employers' helpdesk to complain that the system won't allow you to access Facebook? - Olivia Nelis ~ Let's see, now...in Hogfather there are a number of stabbings, someone's killed by a man made of knives, someone's killed by the dark, and someone just been killed by a wardrobe. It's a book about the magic of childhood. You can tell. - Terry Pratchett, during the writing of _Hogfather_ ~ The only annoying thing about your quotes file is that I'm not in it. - Jeroen van Baardwijk, trying some reverse psychology ~ If you really do want a work tool, buy a van. The only reason for buying a pick-up is because you want to look American. But there’s an easier way of doing that. Eat lots of chocolate and lose your atlas. - Jeremy Clarkson ~ People keep wanting Japan to apologize for all the atrocities they've committed, but honestly, I don't think Pokemon was all that bad. - Azrael ~ Dude, I live in Texas (for now). I'm lucky that there were furniture stores that weren't "JESUS FURNITURE BUT THE GOD KIND NOT THE MEXICAN KIND WE'RE ALL WHITE HERE" where they don't sell bookcases because you only need the Bible and you should carry that with you. - Jim Battista ~ I am slowly mastering this American stuff. Though it is tempting sometimes just to talk loudly and slowly in English until they understand me. - Steven Gross ~ Now, last week, France had an election, and people over there approach an election differently. They vote. Eighty-five percent of them turned out. You couldn't get 85% of Americans to get off the couch if there was an election between "Tits" and "Bigger Tits," and they were handing out free samples! - Bill Maher ~ I suspect goblins. - Daniel Rutter, his logical explanation for a computer issue ~ It's time to get my zombie kitty back from ghost bigfoot. - Jeffrey Rowland, from his Overcompensating webcomic, which is a little odd sometimes ~ Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people. - Richard Herring ~ I think that making me a knight would be extremely silly, and would therefore embrace the idea in true Chestertonian fashion by taking it seriously. I would buy a suit of armour (and stand vigil over it) but since praying in a chapel is not my scene, maybe the Humanists would let me sit in their lobby and read Darwin. Maidens, dragons... oh, the possibilities are endless. - Terry Pratchett, on the possibility of him being knighted ~ I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap. - Kurt Vonnegut ~ Isn't an Imperial shed load spelled shedde lowde, thus distinguishing it from the modern day metric shed load? - Jamie Perry ~ Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end. - Stephen Hawking ~ Having worked as a dishwasher and a busboy for many years, I have been a part of the machinery that produces meals. You don't want to know what goes on in those recesses - what fluids seep and flow. You really, really don't. Things... happen, back there. - Tycho ~ Other than the war in Iraq, the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research, homeland security, global warming and undercutting science, we've yet to really feel the negative effects of the Bush administration. - Bill Maher ~ ... there is nothing you can say to a real conservative to convince him abortion should ever be acceptable other than, "Your daughter is pregnant and the father is black." - Bill Maher ~ When I go, I'd figured the best plan would be to donate my body to science, or to be cremated… but now I'm thinking it would be really cool if crazed folk dug my body up, chopped it to bits, put a stake through it, and maybe paraded the head around town on a pike. I wonder if there is a funeral plan for that? - P.Z. Myers ~ Madonna getting upset with her daughter for dressing too slutty is like Mr. T getting upset with his son for pitying too many fools. - thesuperficial.com ~ I once got in trouble in an assertiveness training session at my old job for telling the session leader to fuck off. I also once led my entire team in a walkout of a team-building exercise... And a friend of mine (in the same job) wound up a trainer so much that he punched him -- in a conflict resolution course. All money well spent. - Andrew Cunningham ~ As a non-believer, I can tell you that the only reason I don't kill people is the difficulty in disposing the bodies. First you have to clean up the blood. Then you have to drag the victim to a carpet and roll him up. Then you have to drag it to the car late at night. Then you have to drive the body and the carpet to the mountains and bury it. Then you have to buy a new carpet. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. And that assumes you already HAVE a shovel. - Scott Adams, on why atheists are under-represented in prisons worldwide ~ Long story short: never shush a woman in labour because Picard is about to say something profound. - Veedubya ~ I have a headache the size of Antarctica behind my right eye and this morning I woke up and tried to drink a scented candle. - Olivia Nelis ~ If you're not comfortable hitting a delicate piece of equipment to fix it then you'll never repair anything right. - Martin McGrane ~ Apples are evil. You know who else liked apples? Hitler. - Amanda Lowery ~ The problem with all his logic and evidence and rationality is that he just doesn't understand how good nonsense feels. Anyway, Bertrand Russell did it first. - Davis Sweet, summarising many reviews of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" ~ My favorite has been the people bitching at me before they even know where I'm going with this. Some fucktard actually emailed me to complain that Marten and Ellen's argument was "the most implausible thing I've done yet." YOU KNOW ASIDE FROM THE ROBOTS - Jeph Jacques, on reader response to plot developments in his webcomic Questionable Content ~ Why do typos become immediately apparent only after you post? - Another Kevin ~ Rich: "I hate computers." OtherPerson: "Then why do you work with them?" Rich: "I hate people more!" - Richard Baker, on his choice of profession ~ Saying that you're going to make the web a place for comics is like suggesting that you plan to colonize the Earth. If they want to break down the walls that keep artists from publishing online, well, I hope they brought a wall with them, because we don't really have anything like that here. I suppose we could special order. - Tycho, responding to Scott Rosenberg in 2006 ~ I once was in a mall where the booth selling Lord of the Rings replica swords was set up across from the booth selling fucsia atheletic suits with the words "Pimp Juice" emblazoned on them in gigantic letters. For a few seconds, I considered becoming the world's dorkiest superhero... - Coldcut ~ Success is the happy feeling you get between the time you do something and the time you tell a woman what you did. - Scott Adams, from Dilbert ~ A tin-foil hat is a mark of someone who can, in all seriousness, say 'if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a concealed listening device placed by the government under the instruction of the military-industrial complex and funded by the media industry.' - Unknown ~ Personally, I think something shouldn't be categorised as a "prohibited weapon" if it's less useful in a fight than a ballpoint pen, but maybe that's just me. - Daniel Rutter, on certain power laser-pointers being illegal in New South Wales, Australia ~ Holst was always a few planets short of a solar system. He couldn't be bothered to write a "Pluto" in 1930, so don't expect a "2003 UB-313" now. - Wolfgang Preiß ~ I can email from my mobile! However, it has taken me ten minutes to type this. - Olivia Nelis ~ Sorry to be a source of misinformation. I hate lies, and love truth! Honest! That has been my policy since 1672, when I was apprenticed to a sorcerer in Prussia. - Tycho ~ Would it be anti-Semitic to say what I really think about kosher wine? - Steve H. ~ As Stephen Hawking always tells me, don't be a namedropper. - Siamang ~ The "Ohnosecond" has been suggested for that moment of realisation that comes from firing off a recursive file-delete in the utterly wrong directory --- though I'd rather like to suggest the Sphinctosecond" to reflect that brief arse-tightening sensation which inevitably accompanies the realisation that Things Have Just Become Not What They Should Be And It's Your Fault. - Tanuki ~ I still want a phone with caller-IQ. - Tanuki ~ My problems start when the smarter bears and the dumber visitors intersect. - Steve Thompson, wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park ~ Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O'Connor ~ If Alan Turing was alive today, the homosexuality would be OK but he'd be in trouble for codebreaking. - Martin Bacon ~ My standard response to statements like "We _must_ implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!" was "You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times." - Matt Roberds ~ Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that's not why we're doing it. - Richard P. Feynman ~ Some days violence is just a nice quick solution to a problem that would need thought, planning and actual work to do justice to. - Wayne Pascoe ~ I once had someone cast a detailed horoscope for me and send it along - apparently, I am one of the most evil baby-raping SOBs on the planet, and the only thing preventing me from oppressing and enslaving and destroying everyone is an excess of sloth and stupidity. These kooks - they say the obvious and pretend it is insight. - P.Z. Myers ~ Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. - Jon Stewart ~ October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February. - Mark Twain ~ You’re in deep shit when I’m the voice of reason. - Patrick Hughes ~ Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. The competent, of course, make it their *first* resort. - Unknown ~ I'm just waiting for the day that someone decides that "ignorant moron" is an ethnic group, and thus cannot be discriminated against. - Christian Wagner ~ It's distinctly sub-optimal having a 70MPH pigeon explode all over the inside of your vehicle. - Tanuki ~ > If you take a 10 cubic kilometer asteroid, hollow it out and create a habitat inside... then accelerate it to 98% (ok, let's say 10% then) of light speed... how much would burn up in an earth sized atmosphere before it hits London? That depends on what kind of movie it is. - Josh Brandt ~ The phrase "Login to www.clue.org and issue the GET command" springs to mind. - Tanuki ~ You don't change the way people think by changing what they say. You change the way people think with HEADLESS CHARRED BODIES FLYING THROUGH THE AIR. BLOOD! FLAMES! HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION! - Alastair Young ~ The little pad of semi-sticky paper is the single largest security breach in the entire computer industry, bar none. - Unknown ~ My group's mission statement - 'You want *what* ? By *WHEN* ?' - Simon Burr ~ I work for an investment bank. I have dealt with code written by stock exchanges. I have seen how the computer systems that store your money are run. If I ever make a fortune, I will store it in gold bullion under my bed. - Matthew Crosby ~ In many ways, the current American presidency and XML have much in common. Both have clear lineages back to very intelligent people. Both demonstrate what happens when you give retards the tools of the intelligent. - Erik Naggum ~ I LOVE CATS. ESPECIALLY ON TOAST. - Xompitor, evil Culture List computer ~ Never ever attempt to make sense of a physics discussion when you have a) no knowledge of physics and b) most of a bottle of merlot sloshing around your bloodstream. - Olivia Nelis ~ Sedentary animals make poor weaponry. - Charlie Bell, imparting great wisdom ~ I'm going to keep right the hell on being absolutely goddam agreeable and there's not a single fucking thing you can do to stop it, you miserable shit. - Jim Battista, being offensively amiable ~ To be honest I always get a bit worried with live radio, like I might not be able to contain the urge to shout “Big Dog’s Cock” out loud to the nation, or something. If it helps to make an otherwise sober discussion more lively in your imagination, you can imagine me trying to suppress that urge as we engage with the issues. - Ben Goldacre ~ I was going to be a neo-deconstructivist but mom wouldn't let me. - Bill Watterson, said by Calvin ~ Last night I went to the pub, where I was bitterly defeated in an argument over the existence of battle camels. - Olivia Nelis ~ No-one ever tells you about the chief hazard of marching in a protest which is stepping in horseshit on the route back. - Olivia Nelis ~ It worried me that my most substantial and knowledgeable posts are on drinking and making cheese on toast. Can't I be one of the physicists for a while? - Olivia Nelis, on her contributions to the Culture mailing list ~ Well, I don't know what kind of girlish and weak snowfalls you get in Norway, but here in manly Finland I can tell you that our weeds don't grow during winter. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ A former boyfriend of mine used to put my bra on his head and pretend to be an air traffic controller. - Olivia Nelis ~ Explosives and peanut butter are always a good combination. - Jim Battista ~ The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein ~ Is it legal for a resident of Texas to use the word 'noodge'? - Gretchen Wright ~ I would not have made a typobgaphical error. - Jim Battista ~ And remember, kids: Data you haven't backed up is data you do not want - Daniel Rutter ~ Dungeons and Dragons never goes away. Girls will still sense that shit 20 years later. - Patrick Hughes ~ You might not be able to remember it, but if you wake up the next day with a bloody nose, no money, barf all over your jeans and a finger or two smelling like poontang then you had a good night. - Patrick Hughes ~ If you accidentally rear-end another car while driving, Florida law dictates that you must stop and confer with the affected party. Turns out just waving to let folks know you’re alright while driving away is a little something the state troopers like to call “leaving the scene of an accident.” - Patrick Hughes, speaking from personal experience ~ Now that you’ve climbed up there, it’s a lot higher than it looks, isn’t it? Dumbass. - Patrick Hughes, giving important advice ~ Just because one of those made you feel nice and two of ‘em made you feel even better, taking the whole bottle will not exponentially increase your good time. In fact, you may get dizzy, or throw up, or end up spending half of the next day wondering where the hell your pants are. Or die. - Patrick Hughes ~ You should never put a string of lit Black Cat firecrackers in someone’s back pocket while they’re on stage playing bass guitar with their band. Even if they fucked your knee up by reversing the figure-four on you that one time. And even if you crack up at just the idea of someone with their pants are on fire jumping up and down and spinning around and around like a dog chasing its tail while trying to figure out what’s going on. Yup, someone could get their ass burned, so it’s wrong. Despite the fact that shit is really, really funny. - Patrick Hughes ~ Beat off enough and eventually someone will walk in on you while you’re doing it. When this happens, pause, look them directly in the eye and say, “You done ruined the romance, so go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say.” If they don’t immediately apologize and leave, run over there and put your hands on their face. - Patrick Hughes ~ Try not to get too depressed. There’s always something to look forward to. Keep alert, and sooner or later you’ll see someone slip and hurt themselves. - Patrick Hughes ~ If you suspect someone likes to do a lot of cocaine, don’t let them “borrow” your CDs. - Patrick Hughes, speaking from personal experience ~ Wear the condom. No, for the love of Pete, not the mint-flavored one. Jesus, that thing burns. - Patrick Hughes, giving good advice ~ Be careful of what you headbutt. Some doors are not as sturdy as they might first look, and it can be hard to estimate your own strength immediately after inhaling nitrous oxide. - Patrick Hughes, giving good advice ~ Should you ever decide to use bamboo sticks and stretchy, decorative string that’s designed to wrap presents to make a bow and arrow, and should you decide to wad up a bunch of duct tape on the end of your arrow and soak it with WD-40 so it’ll, you know, burn better, I would recommend not shooting the flaming arrow onto the roof of a house, or into the lap of your friend’s cousin. Even by accident. - Patrick Hughes, speaking from personal experience ~ Don’t use one of those little Handi-Vac things to empty an ashtray. Because the inrush of air could potentially reignite any fading embers. And, uh, a big jet of flame might shoot out of the thing, surprising you and making you scream like a ten-year-old girl. And you might knock over your beer. - Patrick Hughes ~ If, while chugging a beer, the phrase, “I bet this is going to be the last coherent thought I have tonight,” runs through your head, get someone to take you home. Now. - Patrick Hughes ~ I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific. So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern. If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea. But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil. Maybe that's why I took up boxing. It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi. - Hugh Laurie ~ Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar. - Drew Carey ~ Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question, yes is the answer. - Unknown ~ Anything not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down. - Unknown ~ I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Benjamin Franklin ~ If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, there's going to be one big-ass fight over where to set the thermostat. - Jim Rosenberg ~ Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. - H.G. Wells ~ A computer programmer is someone who, when told to "Go to Hell", sees the "Go to", rather than the destination, as harmful. - Unknown ~ We're the technical experts. We were hired so that management could ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs. - Mike Andrews ~ Just imagine we are meeting the aliens for the first time. Most people would just shoot them to see how many points they are worth. - Simon Cozens ~ Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a freshly-charged Electric Eel and chances are he won't bother you for anything ever again - Tanuki ~ The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to be insane in such a useful way that they can't commit you. - Mark Edwards ~ ....most SF writers are small blokes; they spent a lot of time grubbing around on the floor for old SF mags, not stretching up to the top shelf for pornography...As an aside, Douglas Adams is quite tall. - Terry Pratchett ~ When you get to be a certain age, everything that is cool seems to be a lot of nonsensical, idiotic jibberish. The music that blares from the pimp rides makes no sense; it all sounds like a man with severe autism halfheartedly explaining human sexuality to a parrot, while in the background a dangerously unqualified Caribbean contractor rhythmically installs an automatic garage door opener. Bollocks. - Jeffrey Rowland ~ > I guess it depends if the universe ends up being open or closed. Either way, I wish they'd hurry up and release the API. - Josh Brandt, showing extreme geekyness ~ Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence; many epic tales are pretty much epic crap — just ask my critics, who will moan about entire Canadian forests massacred in order to print my drivel. - Stephen King, from _On Writing_ ~ I've heard people say that, if men had to give birth, there'd be no babies. Well, if women knew the hallucinogenic, soul-chilling, pain of even a relatively light groin strike they would spend their lives hiding alone in a padded cellar. - Mil Millington ~ Roses are red, Violets are purple, Which is a very hard word to rhyme And makes me happy that on February the 14th we don't traditionally have to give each other oranges. - Neil Gaiman, possibly not originally by him ~ > How about the idiots who, for example, think Bush is comparable to Hitler? Of course he's "comparable" to Hitler: It is possible to compare Bush to Hitler: Bush is immensely less charismatic, competent or intelligent than Hitler. Brought to you by the British campaign to eliminate idiotic American misuse of the word "comparable". - Unknown ~ As I said to the little boy who was staring at me as I carried six Super Soakers to the Toys R Us checkout: It's good to be a grown-up. - Daniel Rutter ~ Yes, I sometimes end sentences with prepositions. It's one of the vast number of ways in which I am irresistibly roguish. - Mil Millington ~ [The Fantastic Four] literally has nothing even remotely redeeming about it; not as a movie, not as a comic book movie, not as a shiny disc to cut people with. This movie is a failure on a cellular level; my bones still ache from watching it. It is a cataclysmic embarrassment for everyone involved, and should only be shown to violent inmates who seem to exhibit any remote glimmer of hope or optimism about our race. It is a chillingly irrefutable document of the nonexistence of God. Naturally, I loved it. - Skot ~ There's something deeply wrong with every single person on earth. That's what makes people great! - Jeffrey Rowland ~ The lordship of a manor confers no title. Oh, you could call yourself a lord, but everyone else would call you a prick. - Terry Pratchett ~ Clearly designed in the days of psychedelia and proto-disco -- if ABBA had a bomber, it would be the Vulcan. - Jim Battista ~ Tell your email application that, if it labels my highly important missives as *** SPAM *** again, I'll fucking murder it. Love, the CDR - The CDR ~ My superpower is an uncanny ability to drive right to the absolutely best available parking space. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to figure out how to use this power to fight crime. - Robert Woodhead ~ The Harry Potter books are good yarns, ain't no doubt. But Pratchett — though he may not be a billionaire like fellow Britisher Rowling, richer than the Queen — writes yarns so good you could knit bulletproof socks out of them. - Hank Fox ~ Here is a movie with the nerve to discuss a computer brain "like a quantum sponge" while violating Newton's Laws of Motion. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Stealth_ ~ How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? - Woody Allen ~ If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts. - Lance Armstrong ~ Actually, i have it on good authority that there exists a stairway that apparently extends to heaven. I also hear that an unnamed woman is attempting to purchase it, but her reasons are unknown. - General Zod, paraphasing ~ Hey ... you sound like you know what you're talking about. No fair. - CaptainAvatar, replying to an informative post on Slashdot ~ One of my goals in life is to someday be in a position where I can yell "Enough stalling! KILL THEM!" and no one laughs. Well, that, or "Guards! SEIZE THEM!" I'm not picky. - Ursula Vernon ~ I once went 13 YEARS without drinking. Then I hit high school and it was all kinda downhill from there. - Modern Drunkard Magazine, Staff Member ~ Whoever said that the human body is a beautiful thing has clearly never spent an afternoon by the swimming pool at the Merton Hotel in Jersey. - Richard Herring ~ Beer makes you mellow, champagne makes you silly, wine makes you dramatic, tequila makes you felonious. - Modern Drunkard Magazine ~ If there is ever any confusion, the fuller beer is yours. - Modern Drunkard Magazine ~ Being drunk is feeling sophisticated without being able to say it. - Modern Drunkard Magazine ~ Notice how all these groovy avant-garde blogariffic types assume everyone buys into their weird Apple Computer cult? Yeah, sweet, dude. Your monitor looks like an egg. Guess what? I can right-click stuff. - Patrick Hughes ~ As the old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed find a shinier toy. - Martin McGrane ~ I really think they should reinstate the shortest book in the NT, namely "The Corinthians Reply to St Paul". It goes like this: 1 Dear Saul of Tarsus 2 Please remove us from your mailing list. Love 3 The Corinthians - Chris Brown ~ I'm getting tired of ... all this stupid bullshit we have to listen to all time about 'Children'. It's all you hear in this country. "Children ... Help the Children ... What about the Children? ... Save the Children". You know what I say?... Fuck the children! - George Carlin ~ This all happened in the middle of Oprah, so I hardly noticed. - Rob Cockerham, describing the beginning of his wife's labour ~ If God does exist I suspect that I am going to Hell. - Richard Herring ~ Let us look to the example of "Thundarr the Barbarian." The episodes I saw as a child were quite simply the greatest artistic achievements the human race has ever produced. When I watch the show now, though, it's crap. What obviously happened is, some shadowy group has stolen every one of the original tapes and substituted crappy ones, so what we see now is not what I saw as a child. I have no hard evidence to prove my claim, but obviously that just proves the shadowy group is incredibly competent and would have no problem accomplishing their goals. Why they do it is a mystery, but the fact that they have done it is a given. After all, what other explanation makes sense? - Peter Meilinger ~ Why is there no CSI:Kentucky? Because there are no dental records and all the DNA is the same. - Elf M. Sternberg ~ Arguing on the internet is like being in the special olympics, even if you win you're still retarded. - Unknown ~ > What Would Jesus Drive? Escalade with 5000.00 rims, and he'd pulling a cigarette boat because that walking on water stuff isn't as fun as 75knots/hour with a hugeass rooster tail, and having chicks all over you in the marina so you can be the envy of all the apostles. - Kenji ~ my strip is moebius my bottle, klein so I am my very own valentine! - Unknown ~ A company is selling liquid with a unique identifier. The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership. I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on *your* valuables, and then call the police. - Bruce Schneier, pointing out a small flaw ~ Forget what I said about sake. Fuck sake. I don't remember a whole lot about that night, but I do recall being lost and puking in a bad part of town and not finding my way home until around 5:00AM. That stuff can really sneak up on you. They oughtta call it 'Ninja Juice.' - Matt Milby ~ > A friend from grad school fell and broke his hip; he was laid up for a while but now he's a member of the US House of Representatives. Goodness, poor fellow. Could he perhaps sue his doctor for malpractice? - Josh Brandt ~ Another cliché which the trailer employs is the “setting off explosions in the background as you casually walk away” trick scene. Have any of these guys heard of shrapnel? Just once I would like to see the hero get knocked on his ass in one of these scenes. Now that would be funny. - Brian Briggs, reviewing the trailer for _The Punisher_ ~ >> A happy, healthy and prosperous New year to all. May all your dreams come true except for the nightmares. > But I don't _want_ to dress like a carrot and then suddenly find myself flying above Mexico City. It won't be a nightmare unless your wings fall off, or they divert you to Poughkeepsie, where the landing strip is too short for carrots. - Robin Bignall ~ I said as much to Peter Jackson when I was in Auckland last month. I explained what a valuable property DW could be, the scope of the series, my willingness to accept a smallish advance from the right producer/director... ...and then his butler opened the door and told me to stop shouting through the letter box. - Terry Pratchett, on making movies of his Discworld series ~ > Even something as simple as strapping a branch to a rock to make an axe or club had to be invented by someone. Humans have the advantage that it only has to be invented *once* and can be passed on to the rest of the "tribe". Good job humans didn't arise in North America. The rest of the tribe would have been done for patent infringement. - Chris Brown ~ Oh shit. A bullseye. - Terry Pratchett, on reading someone's prediction for an upcoming plotline ~ > With all those quid pro quos out of the way... If you don't know Latin, it's probably best not to carpe diem your words like that. - Wrexen ~ I should read a potboiler like The Da Vinci Code every once in a while, just to remind myself that life is too short to read books like The Da Vinci Code. - Roger Ebert ~ I might write a letter to Ken Starr saying how George touched me in my special place. - Steven Gross, plotting on ways to remove George W. Bush from office ~ > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Personally, I'd rather be undone by a grand, nefarious Evil Plot than by banal bumbling stupidity..... - Ritu Ko ~ Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to training my boogers to do data entry. - Jim Battista, quoted delightfully out of context ~ I have a full-time job. I own a house. I am married to a lovely, intelligent woman. I have two children. No matter how you look at it, I am a full-fledged adult. And the other day... despite all of these factors... I gave myself a belly-ache eating too many jelly beans. A BELLY-ACHE EATING TOO MANY JELLYBEANS?!! JESUS!" - Sneeze ~ if gw bush is a cowboy from texas then i'm a weight-lifter from siberia. - Moby ~ We have nothing to fear but fear itself - and monsters. - Richard Herring ~ No one with a feeling for literature and poetry can read the typical best-selling business or self-help book with a straight face, because their six rules or nine plans or 12 formulas are so manifestly idiotic, and couched in prose of such insulting simplicity. If I were a boss, I would fire any employer reading such a book, on the grounds that he was not smart enough to be working for me. If I were the employee of a company that hired one of those motivational gurus, I would quit on the grounds that management had been taken over by pod people. - Roger Ebert ~ It's not that I've anything against Unix, mind. It's just that life's too short. - Kat Feete ~ What's my point? I don't know. I'm making this stuff up as I go along. - Richard Herring ~ > Gaiman is on quite a streak at the moment -- three wins in three successive years! -- but at the time he had never won one. (Who can forget "Fuck! I won a Hugo Award!"?) Best reply overhead in fandom afterward: Let's hope this man never wins a Philip K. Dick Award. - Louann Miller ~ ... dating is like defusing bombs. You can't expect it to work every time. Just collect the bits and move on. - James Nicoll ~ "Zatoichi" is one of the weirdest films I've ever seen. It's like a Samurai movie done by Bollywood, where everyone was taking powerful hallucinogens. - Amanda Lowery ~ "Dick Size War." Usually a male thing. In this case, it was lots of "Grar, I have scars and was at [famous battle that went wrong!]" "Oh yeah? Well, if you've ever put your hand down in a bunch of goo that was your buddy's face..." "Yeah, well, I did THAT, and then I had to WALK for FOUR HUNDRED MILES to get a bandaid, while holding my guts in!" and so on and so forth. - Josh Brandt, explaining the acronym DSW ~ You would think that, just once, the people who run the Olympics would want to have a visually appealing mascot -- Halle Berry springs to mind -- but they never do. One of these years, they're going to abandon all pretense and produce an official Olympic mascot called ``Dorko.'' - Dave Barry ~ Having to wait is YOUR punishment for throwing all our tea in the harbor. - Terry Pratchett, on why his books are released later in the US compared to the UK ~ They gave me some sugar-free raspberry Jell-O, and let me tell you - your ass goes a solid 24 without food and that goddamn sugar-free raspberry Jell-O is like having Osama Bin Flavor crash a plane full of celebration into your mouth. - Patrick Hughes ~ Just in case any hippies end up here by accident, I’d like to say a few things about your sham alternative-medicine hokum: Herbs don’t cure shit. Herbs go in quiche, yes. They are not medicine. Sure, cavemen used herbs to try and cure shit, but that was before we had science and stuff. Your commie, repellant herbs and garnishes might’ve been in common medicinal use for 2000 years or whatever, but the average lifespan for people living during those 2000 years was, like, 15. - Patrick Hughes ~ Dry, cracked and bleeding skin is no good on your ding-dong either. You can quote me on that: no good. Not only does having a flaky, crimson rash on your weiner put a crimp in the ol’ social life, but experiencing this problem can also make it difficult to hit your regular masturbation quota. And if your goal is, like mine, to run off a batch by hand anywhere from four to 73 times a day, well… Don’t get thrifty on the lube, my friend. Turns out they don’t make ding-dong-shaped bandages, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. - Patrick Hughes, describing the downsides of psoriasis ~ > We must all abandon the cognitive traps of "Existence, non-existence, both existence and non-existence, and neither existence nor non-existence" and directly perceive the unbounded luminosity of Pure Mind at its source. Er .. you first. - Paul Walker ~ Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. - George W. Bush ~ Having hit museums in Sydney, do you want to do same in Melbourne? And just to clarify, that's hit in the sense of 'go visit,' rather than rob with sawn-offs. - Claire Bickell ~ The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. - James Nicoll ~ It seems that I am consolidating my position as king of the nerds. Which is OK. I quite like nerds. As long as they do what they do in the privacy of their own home. Which of course they all do. That's one of their defining qualities. - Richard Herring ~ The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Catwoman_ ~ > What about Uranus's axial tilt? How do you get a planet in that orientation without an impact? It got really, really drunk and all the other planets were too embarrassed to help it right itself, especially after it spewed the Kuiper belt all over the place. - Keith Morrison ~ If you think about it, a collection that includes a fruit fly and Richard Dawkins and the Great Barrier Reef is an awkward set of objects to try and compare. - Douglas Adams, discussing how hard it is to define life ~ You want crazy? Huh? Huh? There's only two of you left now! You think you're after ME? I'm coming to LOOK for you! You can lurch but you can't hide! HeeerrrrreeessssTerry!!!!! - Terry Pratchett, getting excited about playing Thief 3 ~ I have fulfilled another of my lifelong ambitions: I have run through the streets of a Spanish town wearing nothing but a pair of back to front women's pants. I have always wanted to do that. And now I have done it. It feels good. - Richard Herring ~ However, if it is all pitchforks in the arse, beds of nails and whippings with nettles, do you think masochists have a separate hell where they are forced to lie on comfortable matresses covered in rose petals etc? - Rik Burke, pondering the nature of hell ~ > So what about the various bits in the bible where god essentially kicks some poor person's ass and says the equivalent of "believe in me or ELSE, you fucker!" So it's finally confirmed. Mr T *is* God. - Paul Walker, replying to my question ~ Why is blind faith so danged important? Why doesn't God pop over now and then and do burnouts in his Chariot over the Middle East or something. Would work a lot better then "All will be revealed" - Andrew Paul, pondering religion ~ If there was a Jesus I would like to think of him as being a happy, forgiving kind of fella, who doesn’t judge and occasionally does a magic trick to cheer his mates up. - Richard Herring ~ Here is a film so dreary and conventional that it took an act of the will to keep me in the theater. Who was it made for? Who will it play to? Is there really still a market for fart jokes? - Roger Ebert, reviewing _White Chicks_ ~ > u have been missing alot At least I'm not missing my "y" and "o" keys. - Elmegil ~ Most presidential memoirs are dull and self-serving. I hope mine are interesting and self-serving. - Bill Clinton ~ can god microwave a burrito so hot even he couldn't eat it? - Laura Sharp, pondering the really *important* questions ~ People have been levitating chunks of diamagnetic superconductor for years: that's a bit easier, what with superconductors (unlike me) being specifically designed to let electrons roam around in them unhindered. But I don't want to fly like Superman through liquid nitrogen; I want to do it where it's safe to wear my Y-fronts over my corduroy trousers. - Ben Goldacre ~ >> There's always room for one more creationist cretin. > Where do you put the hybrids, the ones who think that evolution was the method that God used to create man? This is the theory that God's method for creating man was to start out with no plan at all, trying things at random, and keeping the things that worked and throwing out the things that didn't work without understanding why? I *knew* God was a programmer. - Michael Ash ~ Yes, the US decided that to punish the French they would call french fries freedom fries. In retaliation the French decided they would call American cheese American cheese. - George Harris ~ I’ve never been one for regrets — all too often I’m generating indignities so fast that I don’t really have much time to stop and reflect on all the dumb shit I’ve done - Patrick Hughes ~ Growing up sucks. - Graeme Essen ~ Michael did his usual routine of slamming on the brakes to "warm them up", or if you prefer, to put the wind up the guy following him and make them follow less closely (in this case, Montoya). But he made a complete mess of it, locked up, and Montoya ran up his back end. He who lives by the silly slow-lap antic, dies by the silly slow-lap antic... - Andrew Cunningham, on Michael Schumacher's exit from the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix ~ I have also been enjoying the abiolity to upload pictures into the camera... "Here's the beach, here's the bike under the Forth Bridge, here's a picture of the space shuttle launching..." - Andrew Cunningham, happy about his new digital camera ~ Indian politics entails more danger, excitement and absurdities than any Bollywood plot. Honestly. - Ritu Ko ~ Other men my age have wives and families and I am still going through the phase where I am single and childless and want to kill the Loch Ness monster. It made me feel a bit silly. - Richard Herring ~ In [Deus Ex] the ideal combo for me was high proficiency with the sniper rifle, ditto with the nanotech sword, and our old friend the rocket launcher for those moments when you don't know what to say. - Terry Pratchett ~ So I applied for a job with the Marijuana Policy Project as a membership coordinator - which basically monitors their spam... er, email distribution list. And now I have a writing assignment to finish for the next phase of the process. Unfortunately, I find myself too... uhm, impaired to work out the assignment right this minute. - Unknown ~ The advance buzz on "The Alamo" was negative, and now I know why: This is a good movie. - Roger Ebert ~ As a committed atheist it is my belief that when we die, that's the end of it. I certainly hope that's the case, because existing for the rest of infinite time would be too much for me. I can think of nothing worse. Especially as I will no longer have my body, because nearly everything I do that is any kind of fun is physical rather than mental. And most of my mental activity involves imagining the fun I could have with my body if only the opportunities were there. Just being a floating spirit thing with no mouth, stomach or genitals would be rubbish. I'd much rather be a floating mouth, stomach and genitals with no brain. And apart from the floating part that's pretty much what I am. - Richard Herring ~ I use an unadorned IE on a dodgy knocked together PC, click drunkenly and hang on tight for the ride. - Andrew Paul, contributing to a discussion on the evils of IE ~ I've always liked the idea of a special Hugo to be awarded (by force, perhaps) to literary authors who write books dripping with themes filleted from mainstream SF and then deny that it's science fiction 'because it's not about robots and spaceships'. - Terry Pratchett ~ I'm pleased to report that today, March 24, I finally took our Christmas tree down. It was time. - Chuck Atkins ~ There should be only two lines are the airport desks: 'Has Got a Clue' and 'Thick as Two Planks'. - Terry Pratchett ~ SF (and it is usually bad SF, considered purely as SF) written by an acknowledged 'literary' author is automatically filleted from the dreaded genre, usually with a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it doesn't have robots in it'. - Terry Pratchett, on the snobbery of critics' attitude towards Science Fiction books ~ A lot of the authors of 'comedic' sf published in the mid-90s were saddled -- by their publishers -- with being The Next Terry Pratchett. That is a dreadful thing to do to an author. - Terry Pratchett ~ >> It's possible to train yourself to write in any position. > I'm not absolutely convinced that hanging upside down in the wardrobe will work, but you never know... It's come close to that on *really* turbulent flights:-) - Terry Pratchett ~ Elvis is only dead at the speed of light. Out by Vega, he died only a year ago. Travel only a light year further along a convenient wormhole and he's still alive. Admittedly, he's also a long way away. Thank you very much. - Terry Pratchett ~ Look at this trailer for a movie called Casshern. I have no idea what's going on, I think it's from Japan. It's startling how often those two things go together. - Tycho ~ Atkins here I come! Actually, bollocks to that, I'm just putting my faith in a few bouts of ameobic dysentry when I travel. - Rik Burke, planning on losing weight ~ As Hollywood works its way through retreads of TV series from the 1960s and '70s, I find I can approach each project with a certain purity, since I never saw any of the original shows. Never saw a single "Starsky and Hutch." Not one episode of "I Spy." No "Mod Squad." No "Charlie's Angels." What was I doing instead, apart from seeing thousands of movies? Avoiding episodic television like a communicable disease and improving myself with the great literature of the ages. Plus partying. - Roger Ebert ~ Whether you like movies like this, only you can say. But if you do not have some secret place in your soul that still responds even a little to brave cowboys, beautiful princesses and noble horses, then you are way too grown up and need to cut back on cable news. And please ignore any tiresome scolds who complain that the movie is not really based on fact. Duh. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Hidalgo_ ~ Did I ever mention the time I used the phrase "mutant radioactive ants inheriting the post-apocalyptic Earth" in a computer science dissertation? - Richard Baker ~ Next week, I have to write a five year technology infrastructure plan for a rapidly growing multi-million pound turnover company. I wonder if I could sneak a requirement for lesbian kissing robots into that... - Richard Baker ~ I believe it was me that said "Valentine’s Day sucks a big dog’s cock." I believe I said it this time last year in Warming Up. And already my wise thought is being quoted. Admittedly by me, but it is a start. Hopefully it will eventually end up in some collection of humorous quotations. It is my only ambition to be represented in such a tome and I think my thoughts on Valentine's Day have as good a chance as anything else I've said of making my dreams come true. - Richard Herring, not knowing that his dream has just come true ~ I can hear some people saying, “You have no business being proud of it. You didn’t carry her or give birth to her, you MAN.” If this is what you’re thinking, hold on, because I’m about to rock your world. It turns out that the work of raising a child doesn’t end when it is born. - Jeff Vogel, on being proud that his daughter has survived to reach age 2 ~ I am not particularly interested in inner beauty. I like beauty on the outside, where you can actually see it. If there is ugliness within then I'm not that bothered, as long as it stays where no-one can see it and is masked by outer beauty. A woman might have the most beautiful spleen in the world, but unless she's prepared to hack it out and wear it on her dress as a kind of broach, so my friends can all see it and be jealous of me for having such a fine spleened lover, then I'm sorry, I'm not interested. You can call me shallow. That would be preferable to being called strange. - Richard Herring ~ It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. - Bill Hicks ~ One of my big fears in life is that I'm gonna die and my parents are going to come to clean out my apartment and find that porno wing I've been adding on to for years. - Bill Hicks ~ You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really unevolved? You ever noticed that? Eyes real close together, eyebrow ridges, big furry hands and feet. "I believe God created me in one day" Yeah, looks liked He rushed it. - Bill Hicks ~ They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you're high, you can do everything you normally do, just as well. You just realize that it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference. - Bill Hicks ~ I can speak for every guy in this room here tonight. Guys, if you could blow yourselves, ladies, you'd be in this room alone right now. Watching an empty stage. - Bill Hicks ~ I have never seen two people on pot get in a fight because it is fucking IMPOSSIBLE. "Hey, buddy!" "Hey, what?" "Ummmmmmm...." End of argument. - Bill Hicks ~ If you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, then go home and burn all your records, all your tapes, and all your CDs because every one of those artists who have made brilliant music and enhanced your lives? RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrEAL fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few songs. - Bill Hicks ~ People are bringing shotguns to UFO sightings in Fife, Alabama. I asked a guy, "Why do you bring a gun to a UFO sighting?" Guy said, "Way-ul, we didn' wanna be ab-duc-ted." If I lived in Fife, Alabama, I would be on my hands and knees every night praying for abduction. - Bill Hicks ~ A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant. - Bill Hicks ~ Usenet is all fake. I have proof. - Charlie Bell ~ > Jim, who finds that he's actually looking forward to AVP in contrast to the unmitigated disaster that $6M Man will surely be Indeed. In this day and age, what can $6M buy you, anyway? A pair of glasses, a walking stick and a surgical truss. Hardly the esential ingedients for a crime fighting legend. - Rik Burke ~ And I maintain that the whole thing could have been averted if someone had just used a giant Visine-spraying hose on the eye...no wonder it was so angry, it was all red and sore. - Amanda Lowery, discussing _Return Of The King_ ~ Also, Aragorn finally sort of washes his hair...that was the plot thread I was most eager to see tied up. - Amanda Lowery, reviewing _Return Of The King_ ~ > Aragorn's totally fab and all...but Exxon called, they want his scalp. As the True King, Aragorn is naturally endowed with many valuable natural resources. - Gryffyd Dempsey ~ Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring." - John "Beady" Beaderstadt ~ Harmon is singularly unconvincing as the President, not only because he recklessly endangers his daughter's life and his country's fortune, but also because he reads the newspaper, and there's no telling where that could lead. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Chasing Liberty_ ~ You may protest that I'm hauling Britney and Jason into a review of a movie they have nothing to do with, but you would be wrong. There are going to be people who say that no one could possibly be as glamorous and yet as stupid as the characters in this film, and I give you Jason and Britney, case closed. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Chasing Liberty_ ~ Everything that can be invented has been invented. - Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899 ~ I think it is high time Python was recognized as a Religion. People say it changed their lives. It seems to give people hope. They gather together in groups to chant mass quotes. We have all spent three days on a cross. And it would give us a very decent tax break. For fuck sake if Scientology can be rated a religion then Pythology ought to qualify under any decent tax system. - Eric Idle ~ A young lady with a very fine bosom requests I sign her breasts and I reluctantly consent. It pains me to do this but I think it is expected of one. She has delightful skin and I do my best not to rush the job, but after ten minutes I am done. - Eric Idle ~ I think it's time for US Magazine politics. Why the fuck should we bother with ugly ass politicians? Boring insincere lying turkeys. Let's get some girls in skimpies with nice titties in the Oval Office. Let's run Christina or Britney. Hell, the Dixie Chicks made the most sensible political comments of last year, why not run a Victoria's Secret model for Vice President? You'd see a lot more of her than Cheney, and he's so busy lap-dancing fund-raising for re-election that it'd be a nice change to see a hot babe in the hot seat. Could they honestly do any worse? And it would really piss off the Foreign Fundamentalists. Fuck your crusades. Let them deal with big babes with beautiful breasts and that should dampen their revolutionary fervor. Who do you really want, a hairy bearded man in a turban, or Delores in her startling red underwear? Get my drift? - Eric Idle ~ That's the trouble with fucking banjo players. As a guitarist you're just invisible. You sit around for hours playing three chords so that their strangulated instruments can sound vaguely tuneful, and you might as well not be there. I once spent an evening with five of them -it's a nightmare for a guitarist. They always have one more fucking plaintive lament to play involving e minor, dead miners and a cat. Banjo players hate all other musicians. They can only tolerate other banjo players. What's the line you never hear at a recording studio? Will the banjo player please move his Ferrari. - Eric Idle ~ If Bush was so determined to impose democracy on somewhere weird, filled with foreigners, why didn't he just start with Florida? - Eric Idle ~ OK I finally achieved tour blindness. I wake up in the morning and I don't know where I am. I don't know what city I am in, what hotel I am in, what floor I am on or what the room number is. This is it. Pure Zen. Or Alzheimer's. - Eric Idle ~ Surely Victoria's Secret is sexual harassment of the male. At home they bombard me every day with catalogues. As if the sight of young women in satin skimpies was something I wanted to see. Sometimes I can't wait to get the mail… - Eric Idle ~ A woman called Heidi Decker interviewed me on the radio. She told me she loved A Fish Called Wanda, that it was her favorite film and she had seen it about a hundred times. "That's very interesting," I say, "but I'm not in it." - Eric Idle ~ Apostrophes indicate contraction or possession; they do not mean "here comes an s!" - Nickmark ~ absense may make the heart grow fonder, but absinthe makes my head feel funny. and that's all i gotta say about today. - Matt Rhodes ~ I didn't point out to the rather large managers that the football they bring is the wrong shape for a limey. Football, what I call Football, is my addiction. I love it, and have done all my life and don't see why I have to call it Soccer here. My Football is played with the feet, unlike your Football, which is played with the hands. How would you like it if we made you call it Handball in the rest of the world? Soccer indeed. - Eric Idle ~ I have the same birthday as the former British Prime Minister John Major. I wrote to him once on his birthday and said that but for a quirk of fate I could have been Prime Minister of England, and he could have been the Man in the Nudge Nudge Sketch from Monty Python. I hoped he wasn't too disappointed... - Eric Idle ~ I have no problem with her saying “fuck”, but if she becomes one of those kids who says “like” three times in every sentence, I’m takin’ her out. - Jeff Vogel, on his daughter learning to speak ~ Everywhere in this city is draped the improbable red and white maple leaf flag of Canada. Canada itself is improbable. The only other collaboration between the French and English (apart from the Hundred Years War) was Concorde. I notice the Yanks still haven't managed to produce an SST Passenger plane while ours have passed into retirement with only one accident in over twenty five years. (An unsurpassed safety record.) Perhaps that's what happens when you spend so much of your citizens money on high-tech weaponry for bombing low tech people. - Eric Idle ~ My wife has always said I can sleep with as many women as I want. But if I do she'll kill me. So I choose life. Also she is a cutie. - Eric Idle ~ It has become so complicated to fly nowadays that sometimes I believe only a terrorist could get through an airport. - Eric Idle ~ The problem with Leno is mainly the hair. I can't get over the fact there appears to be a badger doing a talk show. - Paul Walker ~ It's like being in a car with the young Hitler, prior to the Munich Putsch. If you had known Hitler in 1923 and had had some inkling of what crimes he would commit, I think you would be morally right to shoot him, or at least shave off his moustache to make him look less charismatic. - Richard Herring ~ My new friend Ian Johnston had an anecdote for me the moment I announced my sojourn to that mystic land, claiming that, yes, they have a lot of different shit there - in fact, they have everything but the thing you would most like. Man, I wish. I wish that's how it worked out. I was in the car with a gig of RAM and the fixings for a Serial ATA RAID, it was like some new holiday where you buy yourself presents. I wish I could say it was the strength of my will that kept me from buying an Athlon FX-51, but I think I actually blacked out. - Tycho, on his first visit to Fry's ~ > Right, come here, I'll give you good kicking. Not the face! Oooh not there either (high pitched) - Steven Gross ~ Until now, Banks has written two types of book – mainstream novels in which the protagonist often appears to be living on a different planet, and science-fiction novels in which the characters actually are living on different planets. - William Leith, discussing Iain M. Banks ~ I am reminded of Gene Siskel's classic question, "Is this movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" In this case, it is not even better than a documentary of the same actors ordering room service while fighting the stomach flu. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Company Man_ ~ My main problem with "horror" as a genre is that it doesn't really evoke any kind of idea of what the film or book might be about. It could be a ghost story, or something about killer alien creatures on the loose, or knive-wielding maniacs, or Britney Spears acting, or whatever else. - Richard Baker ~ I confidentally predict that I will be killed by X in a freak accident with a harpoon or I will be crushed in some kind of a stampede or be eaten by hamsters. I will posit a few more suggestions over the next few months or years (if I have that long) and make sure that when I'm right you all come back to the correct entry and ignore all the others and then make a sort of thoughtful face and say "Hmmmm. Weird. It's like he could see the future. There are dark forces." - Richard Herring ~ I have been confidentally predicting my own death since I was about six years old. One of these days I am going to get it right and then you'll be surprised and slightly spooked by my predictive powers. - Richard Herring ~ Wouldn't it be anticlimactic to be chased by a monster, reach your car, and just kinda drive off? And then never hear anything about it again? - Josh Brandt ~ Everybody always sends you down here with their own illicit, homebrewed mechanism for gambling success - lucky machines, rituals, etcetera. I don't know if you've ever seen the Las Vegas strip, heaped itself like a buffet with faux cultures and obscene proclamations of wealth and grandeur. I'm just saying it's not hard to tell who has the winning strategy around here. - Tycho ~ Flying into Las Vegas made me realize that all other complaints I have made regarding turbulence were wild exaggerations, uncorroborated by reality. I'm not sure this pilot had ever flown before. I have never in my life felt motions like this, the plane tracing complex pictograms in some devil's language. Kara suggested that I have a mint, which she said would help, and I tried to imagine how a piece of candy would improve the impact and subsequent explosion of the aircraft. She was right, though. I closed my eyes and focused on the taste of it, that coordinate in the living universe, and fashioned for myself a green world prior to the invention of planes. - Tycho ~ Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: Were they a real threat? Did they, in fact, exist? If so, will they ever be found? Beats me. Now that I've cleared that up, I'd like to devote what little space I have left to the issue of piñata safety." - Dave Barry, tackling important world events ~ It isn't DIY until you draw blood - Steven Gross ~ I got tired of having to stop and skip a page and substitute "And then they messed around with the sails to try to go faster, but it didn't work." - Jim Battista, on the Master And Commander book he read ~ Worth messing around with for the sheer intellectual thrill, to toy with new application ideas, or the noble pursuit of making rude words appear in the Mac guy's Rendezvous bookmark list. - NTK, discussing HOWL, a free toolkit for zeroconf hacking on Windows, Linux and BSD. ~ When a Mac joins your network, it's always fun to guess what will announce its shareable resources first: OS X's built-in zeroconf/rendezvous protocol, or its braying human owner, showing off again. - NTK ~ bush ordered that there be no more leaks to the media and the news leaked almost immediately. he also ordered that there be no more articles quoting unnamed senior administration sources, which the article did. - Matt Rhodes ~ Note. I am aware that "realtor" is a trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher, Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic? - Roger Ebert ~ Y'know, it's getting to the point where I'm ready to start stopping random strangers on the street and asking them "When's the last time you patched your operating system?", and when they answer with any number more than 24 hours ago, I'm gonna bust 'em in the chops. - Huey Callison, on the vast number of e-mail viruses ~ I think commas are a tool of oppression. - Gabe ~ Actually, I got quite drunk myself last night, and woke up to find that I'd purchased the domain name www.JohnBunnell.com. Which was rather odd. - Rik Burke ~ A perfect adventure should have at least one magnificent private library somewhere in it and a butler. Also ancient crumbling temples, things that shine real bright and cool costumes. - Roger Ebert ~ > Our refrigerator magnet poetry is all alien-invasion based, so there are lots of words like "beam", "tentacle", "frightening" and "plasma". Ironically, that actually describes the *contents* of our fridge. - Rik Burke ~ Those monks who spend their whole lives living in silence, eating gruel or sitting on the top of a thirty foot pole - Humble? Bollocks. They are the most self-inflated egotists men on this earth. And if any monks don't like what I'm saying, then come and have a go if you think you're hard enough. Oh, but you're not allowed to are you? You've got to turn the other cheek. Well come on then. Let me give you another smacking!" - Richard Herring ~ Curious, the ease with which Alex is able to dictate his novel. Words flow in an uninterrupted stream, all perfectly punctuated. No false starts, wrong word choices or despair. Emma writes everything down and then offers helpful suggestions, although she fails to supply the most useful observation of all, which would be to observe that the entire novel is complete crap. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Alex And Emma_ ~ Far from going to the gym I didn't actually change out of my dressing gown all day. I fear I may never work again. Or go out of the house. This is a step backwards for my resolution to make more of my life. But Broadband truly is sensational, if only because it allows constant internet access without having to worry about the phone bill. So you can flip from site to site without a care in the world. I even found one page where you can look at ladies who are almost totally bare. Incredible. - Richard Herring ~ I have to say I did quite fancy giving free running a go myself. Then I realised I lack the required skill, grace, guts, fitness, determination, artistry, strength, agility and vision. However, I suspect that a few pints might temporarily gift me all of those things. Along with the bonus skills of wit, a killer sense of humour and the ability to dance. - Rik Burke ~ I was at another book awards tonight. As usual I was not up for any kind of prize myself, which is fair enough as I only finished my first book yesterday and it hasn’t been published and even I am not expecting such a rapid recognition of my genius. - Richard Herring ~ My only evil-twin-related fear is that sooner or later someone's going to realise they've got the wrong one chained up in the attic. - Emmet O'Brien ~ What do you mean the martians are holding my pizza hostage? - Keith Churchill ~ Do remember there haven't been any wars since the end of WW2. Though we've had plenty of operations, actions, insurgencies, peace keeping, uprisings, smack downs... - Steven Gross ~ Yet this is how most religions started up. Someone noticed that when something happened, it caused some cosmic event and began to believe that if the first thing wasn’t done, then the second wouldn’t happen. In Ancient Egypt priests masturbated each morning in order to recreate the day. But that’s one custom I’m happy to keep going, just in case. - Richard Herring ~ As Jesus said, “If someone nicks your coat, fuck it, give them your trousers as well. That’ll show them.” Look it up, it’s in there. Ian 14:2, I think. - Richard Herring ~ You have to get up pretty late in the afternoon to put one over on me. - Amanda Lowery ~ The movie is rated R, so that the Columbine killers would have been protected from the "violent images," mostly of themselves. The MPAA continues its policy of banning teenagers from those films they most need to see. What utopian world do the flywheels of the ratings board think they are protecting? - Roger Ebert, footnote to his review of _Bowling For Columbine_ ~ Posting at the top because that's where the cursor happened to be is like shitting in your pants because that's where your asshole happened to be. - Andreas Prilop, on replying above quoted text in e-mails ~ You know, screw good writing, I think my first novel is going to be something so awful it deserves an award for it (let's set a goal I can actually achieve, for once!). Hopefully something that in a few decades time, will be forced on teenage schoolkids, with the words, "No, you don't understand, it's actually a very clever *satire*", or "But it's all a very detailed analysis of Freudian models, and a homage to Shakespearian tragedies as well". - Jo Richardson ~ _Firefly_ is not a book for reading. It is a book for laying down and avoiding, or, preferably, destroying. It reaches the same sublime level of awfulness as the Gentry Lee books, such that they should never be donated to a library or anything because then someone might accidentally read them. - Jim Battista ~ nude is the state you're in when you've no clothes on as an an artist's model. naked is the state you're in when you've been forcibly stripped by the people who took you prisoner. *NEKKID* is the state you're in when you're skinny-dipping, I tell you what. - Jim Battista ~ Nothing spoils the immersion of a film for me when a 20-something nearly gets munched by a zombie, just gets away and then says "crickey, that was a bit scary. Phew!". I want "F*** ME, WHAT THE F*** IS THAT? ARGH, GET OFF ME YOU MOTHERF***ER" etc etc. And preferably a pump action shotgun too. - Rik Burke ~ I do not rant. I explain the truth with uncommon lucidity. - Richard Baker ~ Are you menstruating or are you just happy to see me? - Morten Torstensen ~ Goths in Sombreros. That's just wrong. - Scott Beeler, on seeing the photo's of a gathering he attended ~ It is bad luck to be superstitious. - Andrew Mathis ~ you know what's really good? boiling water poured over pieces of ginger with a little bit of rice syrup and some lemon juice. oh. sorry. what i MEANT to say was: you know what's good? totally rocking out and then like partying with some ho's and doing lines of blow off of a dwarfs butt. that's what i meant to say." - Moby ~ Between Venice and Rome, I've seen about nine different varieties of Monks, Priests, and Nuns. What do these differences represent, I wonder - is it for intramural sports? At the vey least, I'd imagine that each type has different skills and bonus feats. - Tycho ~ I'm now exceedingly drunk and must sleep. But I fear I'm about to suffer from 'helicopter bed'..... - Chris Platts ~ Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said, "They who would give up on essential functionality for temporary security, deserve neither functionality nor security"? - Brendan Nelson, adjusting a famous quote for a stupid IT security measure ~ [I want] to enter an entirely lesbian team in NASCAR and have it sponsored by Snap-On Tools. - Jim Battista ~ My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. - Unknown ~ If the human body's obscene, complain to the manufacturer not to me. - Larry Flynt ~ > Pardon my gratuitous use of obscenity, but mighty fuck, TRIPODS! I see your "mighty fuck" and raise you a "Christ-on-a-Bike!" - Chris Platts ~ There's a marvellous photo and explanation here of the phenomenon of Solar Tadpoles, which is something I'd sort of missed until now. Scientists, we are told, now believe the tadpoles are superheated magnetic voids in the plasma. I, on the other hand, believe that they are the infallible early warning system of an upcoming plague of Solar Frogs. This is why scientists are scientists, and why my daughters look suspiciously at me whenever I try to explain the universe to them. - Neil Gaiman ~ > Isn't the half-day holiday given so that you can go wash the feet of some beggars? Screw that, I'm going shopping. Besides, who ever heard of some jewish guy washing the feet of some beggars at easter time, oh wait. - Steven Gross ~ To bring such an unimaginable mass shuddering to a halt would result, one assumes, in more than confused pigeons, but science is not this film's strong point. Besides, do pigeons need their innate magnetic direction-sensing navigational instincts for such everyday jobs as flying from the top of Nelson's column to the bottom? - Roger Ebert, reviewing _The Core_ ~ To watch Keyes and the generals contemplate that burnt peach is to witness a scene that cries out from its very vitals to be cut from the movie and made into ukulele picks. Such goofiness amuses me. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _The Core_ ~ Xarion's friend wanted to know if my man Nihil and I were ready to do Cowboy Killers. I had tried to go to the bathroom just before this, and a loop from my fleece jacket had gotten caught on the pinball machine so I couldn't move, and I had chalked it up to "force fields." So this is the state of mind I was in when a shot of tequila, two lemon wedges, and a rubber band were placed before me. I looked at them for a moment. I couldn't imagine any way to combine these things that would not hurt. - Tycho ~ On a whim, he and two friends drove from Wisconsin to Seattle at a straight shot, and that seemed like something worth celebrating. If you are a young person, I recommend that you celebrate a trek like that with wholesome milk. We did not. We celebrated with Liquor, which is like milk, except that it issues forth from the devil's cold teat. Being bartenders, Xarion and his cohorts crafted beverages whose names are not known to men. He even invented a drink for me, which was exceedingly vile, and constructed thusly: Two shots of vodka, Grenadine, and Alka Seltzer. I'm not actually sure if he likes me very much. - Tycho ~ I imagine the flywheels at the MPAA congratulating each other on a good day's work as they rated "Half Past Dead" PG-13, after giving the anti-gun movie "Bowling for Columbine" an R. - Roger Ebert, once again unhappy about the US movie rating system ~ Seagal's great contribution to the movie is to look very serious, even menacing, in closeups carefully framed to hide his double chin. I do not object to the fact that he's put on weight. Look who's talking. I object to the fact that he thinks he can conceal it from us with knee-length coats and tricky camera angles. I would rather see a movie about a pudgy karate fighter than a movie about a guy you never get a good look at. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Half Past Dead_ ~ What's the point of having facial hair if it isn't a big giant Moses beard that frightens children? - Jim Battista ~ My Favorites folder is just a non-stop carnival of Elf Dicks. - Tycho, quoted alarmingly but humorously out of context ~ I have such an unreasonable affection for this movie, indeed, that it is only by slapping myself alongside the head and drinking black coffee that I can restrain myself from recommending it. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _The Core_ ~ If you're keeping up with our pettier news stories, you'll recall that document recently published by the BBC all about how to make websites accessible by not using proprietary standards. The one they released in PDF. Well, with all the speed of a publically-funded body, they got on the case and produced an alternate version. As you can see from the link, the BBC have now released it in Word format. Well, at least they're tying. - NTK ~ The way I heard it, he was going to drive the snakes out of Ireland, but after two hours of "Are we there yet", "She's on my side of the car.", "I have to go potty." "He Hit me." and "Are we there yet" Patrick became a bit less Saintly and resorted to "If you don't settle down RIGHT NOW I'm turning this car around and going home." How they finally got out of Ireland, I don't know. - Denaldo ~ Well over the past couple years I have signed games, systems, people and toys. My only real rule is I won't sign anything that may bite me or burn me. So for example I would not sign some kind of burning magma dog. - Gabe ~ I suddenly find my sense of moral direction thrown into disarray and do not know which position to take - shock at the stunning censorship and intolerance of dissent, or staunch support for all direct physical action taken against music of the country-pop genre? Support the underlying principles of the Western world, or safeguard the cultural future of the human race from unspeakable horrors? It's a dilemma... - Brendan Nelson, DJ, commenting on the political fallout after comments by the Dixie Chicks ~ I turned on the news. Male newsreader: "It looks -- for now -- like the Iraqui missiles have stopped dropping on Kuwait, although the all-clear sirens haven't sounded. Tonight should see the beginning of Operation Shock and Awe." Female Newsreader: "And the Big Question on Everybody's Lips is -- How will all this affect the Oscars?" Male newsreader (realising that this may be a slight gaffe, trying to fix it): "Er, the big Entertainment Question, you mean." Female Newsreader (irritated at being interrupted): "Well, it's all we're thinking about in LA." I turned off the news at that point, feeling like I was living in a rather broadly written satire. - Neil Gaiman ~ > (Gore was the one who flunked out of college while Bush was the one with an MBA from Harvard) If by "flunked out of college" you meant "graduated cum laude from Harvard (1969), then from Vanderbilt Divinity School (1972), then from Vanderbilt Law School (1976)," you're absolutely right. - Shenkerian ~ New Age? It's just the old age stuck in a microwave oven for fifteen seconds. - James Randi ~ > nothing like a pint of whiskey to cheer you up. Nothing like a pint of whisky to tranquilise a heffalump... - Charlie Bell ~ I think I write more or less how I talk, although I say "um..." a lot more than I write it, and will occasionally in conversation drift off in the middle of a sent.... - Neil Gaiman ~ The Mariott hotel group is under the impression that you can make a drinkable cup of tea using the hotel room's coffee perculator, a complimentary tea-bag, a thing of creamer, and a sort of a small cut off plastic straw. The Marriott hotel group is wrong. - Neil Gaiman ~ Eternal damnation awaits anyone who questions God's unconditional love. - Bill Hicks ~ Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are *really expensive* in prison. - John Hardwick ~ I cannot reply to this without my computer crashing - Camilla Roskelley ~ I never really had the college experience. I went to a community college for a few years but right when I joined they got Tekken 2 in the arcade. The combination of Paul Phoenix and teachers who didn’t care if I showed up for class proved to be my academic downfall. - Gabe ~ My guess is, if most guys saw how their relationships with their children would turn out, they’d give themselves vasectomies with ballpoint pens the moment they got their first boner. I may sound a tiny bit pessimistic now. It’s OK, though. Reality is far, far worse. - Jeff Vogel ~ Our baby daughter Cordelia is almost a year old. She is, you will be pleased to hear, still alive. Most of the credit for her continued survival goes to my wife, who has given Cordelia all but one of her baths. If that job was left to me, it would only be a matter of time before my daughter was dirty at the same time as the dishwasher was empty, and I would get a great idea for how to save a little time. - Jeff Vogel ~ Since we have a child, and children actually give a shit, my wife Mariann and I are going to need to start really putting some flash and spin on this whole Christmas thing. This is easy for Mariann... she loves Christmas. She puts up lights and a tree and everything. Me, I just buy people some dry goods, suck up my own gifts, and spend the birthday of our Lord and Savior sitting around in shorts, scratching my balls, and watching videos. - Jeff Vogel ~ It’s sad and painful, but true. Babies are fragile and valuable. Think about it this way. Carrying a baby is like carrying a rare, original, mint condition Millennium Falcon model, except that the baby is much harder to replace on EBay. - Jeff Vogel ~ I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. - Woody Allen ~ If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever. - Woody Allen ~ The Koran forbids anybody to wear fancy jewelry or any other "status symbols" which might suggest the person wearing them is either wealthy or a big fan of status symbols. This also means that Islamic fundamentalists cannot drive SUVs, which I really fucking hope catches on with other religions damn soon. - Rich Kyanka ~ The genius behind the Jewish fundamentalist clothing line lies in its flexibility; pray from 6:30 AM until 11:30 PM, then head over to your local goth nightclub and seamlessly blend in with various Switchblade Symphony fans! - Rich Kyanka ~ Web-filtering software is a godsend not only to god but also to sites like Something Awful, preventing me from being washed into Lake Washington by the ridiculous amount of furious emails sent by highly religious people who might take offense to me referring to their magnificent god as "some bearded guy." I'm not exactly sure why facial hair is a sign of being King Holy Pants and everything, but it seems like bearded guys are always at the top of the food chain when it comes to the ranks of religion. - Rich Kyanka ~ Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends. - Woody Allen ~ Anti-vaccination people are spooky. I'm not saying that vaccines should be mandatory, but everyone who doesn't have their infants take advantage of the miracles of modern medicine should be required to either provide a solid health reason why the vaccine will be harmful ("The last one made her burst into flames.") or write a 500 word essay entitled "Why Polio Isn't So Bad." - Jeff Vogel ~ The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of Saddam Hussein. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _The Life Of David Gale_ ~ I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do. - Roger Ebert ~ a friend of mine once invited me to go skating in central park at 9 a.m. no, i don't think so. you can't fool me. there is no such thing as 9a.m. i've heard tell of this mythical time, but i KNOW that it doesn't exist. it's like atlantis or the loch ness monster or wyoming. purely mythical things that really could never actually exist. - Moby ~ >> Man, those Jedi... no fcuking imagination at all... > Right - holy war against *you* then. A Jehadi ? - Graham Lee ~ > What's a Jedi temple called? A 'Jedi Temple' - Will Sheward ~ Neither MYTHTV nor FREEVO are ready for rolling out onto your grandparents' settop boxen (unless your nan knows how to install MySql, or hand-edit dodgy XML and Python config files). Both suffer slightly from that post-Enlightenment open source development strategy of coding until you hit a cool enough screenshot, then moving on. - NTK ~ > What I meant was, how do you decide if a dictatorship is a right-wing military regime or a left-wing military regime? Drop them from a great height and see which way they spin? - Charlie Bell ~ Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _How to lose a guy in 10 days_ ~ I used to take my son into public restrooms, and it was no big deal, because boys can, well, you know what boys can do. But girls need a place to sit, and the typical men's room has no surface I want my daughter to come into contact with, including the ceiling. - Dave Barry ~ I've always wondered how God might be able to push through the regime change plans outlined in Revelations if faced with a modern humankind with modern weaponry; those angels with swords of fire must have sounded scary to the Pharisees but how much gigatonnage could those boys handle? - Brendan Nelson ~ Preparation is for the weak. A real teacher does not coddle his students with decadent "coherence" and "understandability." - Jim Battista ~ Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money. - Moliere ~ The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. - W. Somerset Maugham ~ One closing grammar note: I got several letters from people who informed me that ''stupidest'' and ''stupider'' are not real words. To those people, I say, with gratitude and sincerity: Oh, shut up. - Dave Barry ~ For the record, any of you people wanting more snow are officially designated Wankers Who Work Indoors All The Time, with a side helping of I Hope I Have More Credit With The Gods Than You. It's finally getting warm out here, but I've been pissing about on the four-wheeler in this stinking white shit for days, freezing my buns off and cussing at cows, who think bad weather is an excuse to break down long stretches of fence, show up at the barn, and shit all over everything. Not to mention hauling water troughs in to hand-thaw them with hot water and wind that could make a Eskimo go for another coat. God, I hate winter. - Kat Feete, who apparently doesn't like winter ~ Ten top reasons religious folks should not worry about Harry Potter leading children into witchcraft and the occult: 10. Harry Potter is fictional 9. Harry Potter is fictional 8. Harry Potter is fictional 7. Harry Potter is fictional 6. Harry Potter is fictional 5. Harry Potter is fictional 4. Harry Potter is fictional 3. Harry Potter is fictional 2. Harry Potter is fictional 1. Harry Potter is fictional. - James Randi ~ Virgo: (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Certain shortcomings in your education and upbringing cause you to read meaning into the relationships among various celestial bodies. - The Onion, from the horoscopes page ~ apparently i....was....mentioned....on....the.....simpsons..... it is a good day. - Moby, who is a huge Simpsons fan ~ if you haven't had any caffeine in a month and then you have a very strong cup of coffee, well, you end up like me right now. i feel like a squirrel on crack. - Moby ~ ok, i know this isn't going to do much to re-inforce my credibility within the world of extreme sports, but we've just added 2 new forums, 'art' and 'literature.' - Moby, talking about his web page forums ~ Amazon have had me on tenterhooks with repeatedly-delayed delivery dates for Christmas pressies, but they finally arrived today! Phew - though I might've had to *leave the house*... - Chris Platts ~ I had a dream last night that the Earth had been conquered by aliens, and among their harsh terms was one limiting internet use to about a half-hour each day. And they were absolute pigs for cost-cutting and improving efficiency. It was like being conquered by auditors. - Gryffyd Dempsey ~ what happened to words? what's with all the beats per minute? who needs all those beats per minute? nobody can possible hear all those beats. you loose some of them. and then where are you? dancing like someone shoved a vibrator up your ass and set it on stun. - Matt Rhodes, complaining about certain music ~ I am not, myself, terribly fond of chocolate. I think the color unseemly, and this suspicion underpins everything I believe about it. - Tycho ~ You know what would be cool? A One Ring looseleaf binder. It would have one ring, and you could use it in the darkness. To, you know, bind things." - Alter Reiss ~ I had my car's alignment checked. It was chaotic evil! - James Wolf ~ Every time I have to pipe something into awk I get this mental picture of a big fat seagull with stdin connected at the wrong end. - Arther van der Harg ~ And consider this: considering how long Bond James Bond has been, ehh, active, about 40% of the people born since 1960 must be his kids. - Jim Battista ~ I'll be serving as a crew biologist and psychologist, as well as Health and Safety Officer, which means that after everyone goes insane, the research station will probably burn down. - Adrian Hon, on his visit to the Mars Society's Desert Research Station ~ Regarding good graphics being distacting, I had a similar problem when GT3 on PS2 first arrived. It looked so good, I kept forgetting to steer. - Charlie Bell ~ Can I just say that I'd like to place a bet on the chances of the first person to use a space elevator exclaiming "wheeeeeeeeeee!" as he or she is doing so. A tenner says they do. - Chris Platts ~ To quote another ancient proverb, A camel is a horse designed by a committee. "Life or Something Like It" is the movie designed by the camel. - Roger Ebert ~ Dad remembers the 70's fine. It's the 80's that he has trouble with. - Jack Osbourne ~ Well we know that Beethoven was notriously grumpy. He was also the greatest musical genius to ever live. That of course is a value judgment, and if you disagree with it you are a terrorist - Dallas Barabasz-Lynn ~ If you're Mormon you might disagree, but if you're Mormon you're crazy anyway so go away. (To the Mormons -- if you think I'm making fun of your religion, I am. Crazy bastards.) - Dallas Barabasz-Lynn ~ The internet. It needs to be bigger. - Dan Hon ~ Fear the wrath of the Metallica-loving rubber lovemasters! - Amanda Lowery ~ > I'm actually 15 years old and yes I only masturbated 336 times in my life. I believe the phrase you're looking for is X-No-Archive... - Gareth Owen ~ > Is the American war machine really being run on such an unprotected basis? Far more frightening IMHO is that the American war machine is run by Americans... - Liam Gretton ~ My mother told me on my own wedding day that if Brenna and I ever got into a big fight, we should immediately take off all our clothes. I mean, it works well enough. When I can forget my mom. - Tycho ~ >> That said the idea of a sentient Labrador is kinda scary > Why? The idea of a sentient creature with only three desires: > --to eat > --to mate > --to retrieve thrown objects > strikes you as scary? Sounds like a baseball or football jock. - Robert Seeberger ~ You can't really appreciate the bible until you have read it in the original klingon. - Steven Gross ~ John Ashcroft seems to have leared what he knows about civil liberties from Tehran University. - Gryffyd Dempsey ~ I've completely lost the ability to type without errors, for some reason. And I'm totally sober. This is not good. - Paul Walker ~ It's English. A language of few rules, but millions of exceptions. - Charlie Bell ~ Perl looks like my cat sat on the keypad. - Charlie Bell ~ The polygraph is . . . a highly reliable detector of orgasms. But does it detect lies? Only if you're lying about having an orgasm. - Robert Park ~ The Spiderman movie is the reason god invented the cinema. - Gabe ~ I'm a simple man with simple tastes. No, hold up, I always get that wrong. I'm a simple man. - Rik Burke ~ The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. - Douglas Adams ~ Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands. - Douglas Adams ~ Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to. - Douglas Adams ~ In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams ~ I get all my ideas from a mail order company in Indianapolis. Although I'm not prepared to give you their name. - Douglas Adams ~ Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. - Carl Jung ~ If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. - Isaac Asimov ~ I also got to shoot my boss in the back 13 times in one game at laser quest. Which officially makes today the best day out....EVER! If only I could have tied him up and pistol whipped him, it would have been perfect. - Rik Burke ~ There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again. - George W. Bush ~ I'm the guy who looks like a complete dork. - Wil Wheaton ~ I thought IT support and Lion Taming were the same thing - Keith Churchill ~ > Facts are still facts. And when has having no leg to stand on ever bothered me before? - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I've started referring to the proposed action against Iraq as Desert Storm 1.1, since it reminds me of a Microsoft upgrade: it's expensive, most people aren't sure they want it, and it probably won't work. - Kevin Barkes ~ > Is it time I watched Battlefield Earth? No. Watch paint dry instead. Even if it's already dry. - Unknown ~ it is a free country, after all. well, at least until i get elected. then you'll see. - Moby ~ well, the reason that we're going to the beach is cos there's apparently some really good crack for sale at the beach. and we're meeting metallica at the beach. and we're going to burn tires at the beach. just trying to regain some tough-guy cred. oh, look! there's a little lavendar pot-pourri on my hotel desk! damn damn damn. tough-guys do NOT wax poetic about lavendar pot-pourri. i need lessons. let's try again, fuck yeah! there's some totally rad, fuckin' kickass lavendar pot-pourri on my awesomely rad desk! better? no? ok, i'll stop now. time to find my uni-tard and my parasol. - Moby ~ No, you've got it all wrong. We're supposed to argue based on our own prejudices and convince each other we're right. Why you want to bring actual facts into it? - Charlie Bell, on how to debate properly ~ We in the USA haven't learned how to write a date logically, or use the metric system, or get with Celsius... - James Randi ~ There's something about a real writer saying I'm a writer that makes me feel like maybe I could amount to something after all, if I just keep going. - Neil Gaiman, after reading Orson Scott Card's review of _Coraline_ ~ this is Finland and people don't chat unless beer is involved. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ No no...women *are* supposed to go to the bathroom togther for sekrit female things (like talking about the other people at the table/party/what have you and borrowing feminine hygiene products from each other), they're just not supposed to talk while on the cludgie (in my world anyway). - Amanda Lowery ~ To believe that human history is controlled by a secret cabal who are the real power behind all governments is, to use precise scientific terminology, to be a whacko nut case. - Steven Brust ~ Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. - Andre Gide ~ Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. - Albert Einstein ~ Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein ~ Do not perform these out of order: 1--Put your contacts in 2--Urinate 3--Slice the jalapenos for the nachos - Billy King ~ If the universe really is like this, we Earthlings are gonna kick butt when we get out there! - David Brin, on sci-fi movie clichés ~ Rarely in the field of corporate bollocks has so much been said in so many words to communicate so few actual thoughts. - Charlie Bell ~ Sod this, history's boring - I'm going to bed. - Rik Burke ~ Your Jedi mind tricks will not work with... hey... shiny thing... - Dan Hon ~ My fantasy is to have a (very James Bond-like) laser mounted on the hood of my car. Not to blow people up, but so that I can etch the word "asswipe" on the rear window of the more dangerous drivers. - Marvin Long ~ And once, just once, I'd like to be pulled over by a copper, and told "Was just following you through that series of bends, sir, and that was textbook. Good lines, perfect speed, excellent positioning, couldn't have done it better myself. Have a gold star." - Charlie Bell ~ As Brendan said, an 'anthem' should be a good, singalong stuff, rousing choruses of stella-fuelled masses singing it arm in arm as they fall out of the pub. Think of the unifying effect of that! None of this poncey "send her victorious" bollocks, I want our new national anthem to be Angels by Robbie Williams. - Rik Burke ~ Hey, Fort Worth has charm...er, if you're into cows & beer, anyway. - Marvin Long ~ Oh dear god. I've just used the "if you're not a criminal you've nothing to be scared of" argument. I believe I'm now bound by law to join the Conservative party. - Rik Burke ~ Even though it's far less catchy, I'd be far more likely to support a "war against homicidal fundamentalist nutcases" than a "war against terrorism". - Brendan Nelson ~ Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: ``Those individuals should be on medication.'' - Dave Barry ~ When someone warns you that their holiday photos contain a little nudity, is it reasonable to expect that that means that there's a little bit more skin than usual? I certainly wasn't expecting photos of some guy called Andreas in all his upstanding glory. - Claire Bickell ~ There ought to be laws against putting Buffy dvd rips where I can get them. - Charlie Bell ~ There are certainly some things that you can do on the Moon that you can't do anywhere else. For example, if you wanted to study the Moon itself then it's obviously the place to do it. - Richard Baker ~ I'd rather eat my eyeballs on toast than use a Hotmail account. - Richard Baker ~ I've just worked out that I can go on the dole. This is all pretty mind bending stuff. If I do, I'll let you know what I'm spending your tax on. - Dan Hon ~ *note to self* the best time to begin sampling a range of exotic foreign vodkas is *not* after eight pints of stella. - Rik Burke ~ I love you forever, Rich. Come here, and I'll give you a good kicking. - Camilla Roskelley ~ > Why can't I buy Mint Kit-Kats in the US? Because if you could, the terrorists would have already won. - Jim Battista ~ Memo to self: even if you don't think you're going to win, write a speech. Otherwise you will wind up on the stage in front of several thousand people, finishing an impromptu speech with "Fuck, I got a Hugo." - Neil Gaiman ~ I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. - Gilder Radner ~ The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. - Oscar Wilde ~ Drawing on my fine command of the English language I said nothing. - Robert Benchley ~ Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read. - Frank Zappa ~ Puritanism: the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having a good time. - H.L. Mencken ~ Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. - Groucho Marx ~ Iced tea is an abomination that should be obliterated from the face of the planet and its creator forced to endure a eternity of diabolic punishment, yet it is quite nice when combined with mango flavouring. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I refuse to spell things the wrong way, though. Merka may have had to sell its extra u's during the war, but that's not my problem. - Amanda Lowery, a Canadian now residing in the US ~ Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. - Mark Twain ~ I don't like money very much, but it calms my nerves. - Joe Loius ~ Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. - Dave Barry ~ The difference between love and sex is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. - Woody Allen ~ Our comedies are not to be laughed at. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Never make forecasts, especially about the future. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Let's bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth century dialogue. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Remember this: many a good story has been ruined by over-verification. - James Gordon Bennett ~ We have that Indian scene. We can get the Indians from the reservoir. - Sam Goldwyn ~ A bachelor's life is no life for a single man. - Sam Goldwyn ~ True, I've been a long time making up my mind, but now I'm giving you a definite answer. I won't say yes, and I won't say no -- but I'm giving you a definite maybe. - Sam Goldwyn ~ A joke is a very serious thing. - Winston Churchill ~ If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn't be in this business. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Go see that turkey for yourself, and see for yourself why you shouldn't see it. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with. - Artemus Ward ~ It's absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities. - Sam Goldwyn ~ If I look confused it's because I'm thinking. - Sam Goldwyn ~ I had a great idea this morning, but I didn't like it. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Gentlemen, include me out. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Let's have some new clichés. - Sam Goldwyn ~ If only God would give me some clear sign. Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. - Woody Allen ~ In life you have to take the bitter with the sour. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Always go to other people's funerals. Otherwise they won't come to yours. - Yogi Berra ~ The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry. - John Jensen ~ A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year - Marty Allen ~ Diplomacy is saying 'nice doggy' until you find a rock - Wyn Catlin ~ Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams - Mary Ellen Kelly ~ Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. - Yogi Berra ~ I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately it's the government. - Woody Allen ~ Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl - Mike Adams ~ If you come to a fork in the road, take it. - Yogi Berra ~ If you don't disagree with me, how will I know I'm right - Sam Goldwyn ~ And it's also ok to bugger a dead animal, apparently, which I'm sure comes as a big relief to all of use. Bring out the moose! - Rik Burke ~ It comes from the school of "Why blow up two cars, when fifteen cars will do?" - The Self-Made Critic, reviewing _XXX_ ~ Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, also known as XXX. He doesn't like you. If you met him in a street, he'd probably punch you and say something witty like "I just punched you." He's totally awesome. - The Self-Made Critic, reviewing _XXX_ ~ The TV signal just cut out! In the middle of the Simpsons! Help! Heeeeeelp!! - Martin McGrane ~ i was gonna call 911...but i was downloading a file - Opcode ~ The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? - Unknown ~ i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet - HatfulOfHollow ~ Also please apply standard clauses here apologising for general web-site crapiness; bear in mind I'm a mainframe programmer and not used to fancy stuff like "colours other than green and black". - Rik Burke ~ And I'd just like to make it clear that I am not as unfit as has been claimed, and that when I reached the peak of Primrose Hill, I was merely wheezing in solidarity with Phil. And sweating for the same reason. And the minor coronary was merely my propensity for method acting going a little far. - Rik Burke ~ Ask someone who did more than chemistry A-level... I truly don't know the answer to that. Can't we got back to bugs and blood and evolution, please? I feel safer there. - Charlie Bell ~ a rose by any other name is still a reproductive organ. - Moby ~ in the future we're all going to regret this period in music where our tastes were determinedby 11 year old girls and wrestling fans. - Moby ~ It's a well-known fact that United never actually lose games, but are the victims of a cunning, worldwide conspiracy. - Chris Charles, reporting on a Manchester United loss ~ I refuse to eat lima beans. They look like dinosaur boogers. - Gina ~ > How come Neil Gaiman books in development as movies never actually get made? Sunspot activity. - Neil Gaiman ~ There's always something to do at work, even if it isn't actually of a work-oriented nature - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ > Still looking for a decent random quote generator I find the List works quite well for that. - Paul Walker, talking about the Culture List ~ A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. - Mark Twain ~ Computers allow people to make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. - Mitch Ratcliffe ~ It's as much fun as getting stabbed in the ribs - Andrew Crystal, describing working with UML ~ Gun Metal just came out here. It's incredibly satisfying to push a button and see everything in a 10 kilometre radius around me evaporate. I feel like George Bush... - Cameron Munro ~ >> I aim to please. > No, you don't. Ok. Sometimes I pretend to. - Claire Bickell ~ Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Government is from Uranus. - Peter Dawson ~ Do you think I should be worried that I am drawn to girls with pointy Vulcan ears? - Andrew Paul ~ Tides happen when all the fish group together and swim quickly in one diretion, just to wind us up. It's also why the planet revolves. - Rob Andrews ~ Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian. - Dennis Wholey ~ Many years ago I pointed out that deadlines are cowardly: they don't stride out alone. They run in packs, and leap out at you all at once. - Neil Gaiman ~ It's time for you to show some guts and gather together whatever money you have been able to acquire since the last time you got nailed by Wall Street, and send it to Wall Street. Just do it! Wall Street needs your money NOW! That crack stuff is not cheap. - Dave Barry ~ Nearly FOUR BILLION DOLLARS! This is an incredible feat of improper accounting, on a par with some of the finest work of the federal government. The WorldCom accounting department must have slaved day and night to improperly account for that much money in such a short time. I've been filing expense reports to The Miami Herald for 20 years, and I bet I haven't improperly accounted for HALF that amount. - Dave Barry ~ Nevertheless, you small investors remain skittish. One reason is these darned accounting scandals. I don't know about you, but I always thought of accountants as being serious, suit-wearing people whose idea of a wild and crazy night was to crack open a bottle of Snapple and recalculate their tax returns. And here it turns out that accounting is a WILD AND CRAZY profession. It is the Limp Bizkit of professions. - Dave Barry ~ The last I heard, my editor was mumbling a bit over [the Johnny books]. Though he personally loved J&tD I think he thought Americans wouldn't (as in: no-one in the book is American, WWI happened on another continent that American kids couldn't find on an atlas with three tries, and it feels, ugh, European. I'm paraphrasing his far more diplomatically worded comments). - Terry Pratchett ~ tax-paying hotel guests deserve to have a good nights sleep that is undisturbed by flying dinosaurs. at least that's what i think. - Moby ~ Men are *not* overcompetitive! Men do *not* take competitive activities too seriously! I am *determined* to win this argument!! - Brendan Nelson ~ Ah, dictionaries are for the weak. I got through 4 years of German at school by making up words, I don't see any reason to change now. - Andrew Cunningham ~ The computers may suck, and software ... may suck, but it's the people who provide the horror. - Rebecca Ore ~ Well, you will notice that the press release came from Austin, TX. There's a high probability the person was high when they wrote it. - ColdChef ~ The only thing I can say in my defence is that I was horrifically sober at the time. - Phil Dyson ~ Oh, and be sure to incorporate lots of slang from 2 years ago. Word up. - Jim Battista, on how to embarrass your kids ~ Of all the special effects in the movie, the most impressive are the ones that keep the breasts of the many nubile maidens covered to within one centimeter of the PG-13 guidelines. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _The Scorpion King_ ~ i like the fact that i got a letter from jane goodall today and as far as i can tell she actually wrote it. - Moby ~ If I've pissed anyone off, offended anyone, pushed some buttons, made you cry with frustration or just been plain rude, then you probably deserved it. - Jon Savage ~ Good at writing crap, crap at writing good. - Rik Burke, commenting on his author skills ~ Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damned good. - Drew Carey ~ Conan the Grammarian - Jim Battista ~ if you only knew the myriad bad hair and clothing choices i've made in my life. me with a pony tail and a 'hip hop' sergio tacchini warm-up jacket and 'hip hop' dookie gold rope in 1988. and so on. and so on. yes. i will understand if you don't want to be my friend anymore. - Moby ~ i've never done anything embarrassing in my life (apart from misspelling words in a public forum). - Moby ~ > Then why is it called "Great" Britain? Cos it's well wikkid? - Rik Burke ~ I've had my purchase of an X-box and Halo vetoed until we've bought a sofa, got some curtains and had the bathroom tiled! Needless to say, these conditions have produced a flurry of activity the likes of which haven't been seen since we moved in...I bought the sofa yesterday, and I'm off into town now to look at some tiles... - Rik Burke ~ If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. - Lin Yutang ~ No good deed goes unpunished. - Clare Boothe Luce ~ Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. - Robert Bentley ~ If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it. - W. C. Fields ~ I am willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong. - Sam Goldwyn ~ Yes, even as a child I was already on my way to being a dangerous subversive. Feel free to talk to any of my middle school teachers if you doubt me. - Wil Wheaton ~ Curse you and your quotes file! - Steven Gross, endorsing this quotes file... ~ Talking of extreme sports and our earlier thread about the terminal velocity of a hippo"[...] - Steven Gross, casually introducing a new topic of discussion ~ Yeah, I sprained that wrist in 'Nam! - Steven Gross, on how to explain a suspicious injury ~ So can we bomb Red Cross warehouses, Chinese embassies, Afghan wedding parties, and friendly troops? I suspect that, if we can't, it wouldn't give an accurate picture of "America's Army". - Brendan Nelson, talking about the FPS _America's Army_ ~ ... And why arnt I in your quotes list? .. I say plenty of stupid things!... - Daniel Morrison, my brother ~ > *sigh* You're making Baby Jesus cry. i rather suspect he's been crying for about 2000 years now. Lord, save me from your followers - Rob Munsch ~ Diagnosis Murder, absolutely the worst TV show in history - yes even worse than Eldorado and the complete works of Glen A Larsen, has people defending its 'quality'. A billion years after our ancestors crawled out of the ocean have led to this... Doomed I tell you, doomed. - Phil Dyson ~ Y'know I always wonder what happens to e-mail marketeers when they die. I have this vision of them descending into hell where they are forced to read the crap they've clogged our inboxes with for eternity. Using Lotus Notes. While listening to the latest Posh Spice record. - Phil Dyson ~ musicians should be able to run around like retarded monkeys for 2 hours at the very least. it's our duty to be fit! we are here to entertain you! and an out of breath musician might be funny in a pathetic sort of way, but an out of breath musician is not quality entertainment as i understand it to be. - Moby ~ i have a friend who failed the turing test.... - Rob Munsch ~ Dude! We play death metal! An appreciation of Hendrix is not required. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ Call me a romantic, but when your loved one thinks you're dead, give them a ring. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _We Were Soldiers_ ~ The number of "proper" chords I know is actually smaller than the number of guitars I own. - Andrew Cunningham ~ On a crowded train journey or something, if someone headbutted me whilst they were dancing, *then* I could be righteously annoyed, since dancing and headbutting aren't generally seen as part of the experience (depending on which train you are on of course) - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ Yes, it's about time we had some new taboo words. Or bring back some old ones. I'm going to dip all the way to Shakespeare and start calling people a "bull's pizzle", I think. On the one hand: offensive. On the other: cultured. And as for that parental line about swearing only indicating a limited vocbulary - well, it fucks that theory right up the arse. - Rik Burke ~ Bears, apparently, make brilliant housepets. Less dull than fish, but more practical than giant squid, they are the perfect compromise. - Andrew Cunningham ~ Was bitten on the cheek by a spider. Do not appear to be able to climb walls or have any kind of extrasensory abilities yet. So far I've just got a spider bite on my cheek. Seems deeply unfair, really. - Neil Gaiman ~ > Okay, I see what you mean, although I'm not sure I'd sure I'd characterise you as quite so strongly optimisitic/idealistic. You don't think intending to industrialise the Solar System *and* usher in a new Renaissance are strongly optimistic/idealistic? - Richard Baker ~ I still prefer to think of myself as mysterious......'sneaky' just doesn't have the same ring somehow. - Ritu Ko ~ "Anakin" displays about as much passion for "Padmé" as I would. There are obviously some unresolved sexual orientation issues here. Hmmm ... where does "Obi-Wan" fit in? "Ooo, Master, what a big light sabre you have." - Patrick Gliddon, cheerfully gay ~ Do you have to pass a punting exam before you can live in Cambridge? - Roxanne Dunning ~ Soccer isn't an English word......it's American for 'football' - Lee Benjamin ~ My eye doctor had a stroke a few years ago, he says that his staff can actually read his writing now that he has to use his left hand... - Amanda Lowery ~ If you're tired of cardboard heroes saving the world in implausible ways, you're tired of life... - Charlie Bell ~ Neckties are Satanic symbols. They represent Judas's noose. Those who wear neckties signify their identification with the man who betrayed Our Lord. You will notice when you watch television that all the announcers who are wearing neckties are lying to you. This is no accident. - Unknown ~ May numberless hungry wombats of perdition mistake your naughty bits for kibble! - Anthony J. Bryant ~ I've been off-and-on reading a history of Britain (misnamed, should be a history of England), and really, for the amount of fuss made at various times over who was the rightful heir, there were an awful number of times when the answer was 'the one with the biggest army'. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ i've just been told that '18' is the # 1 selling album in the world. whoo-boy, that's just nuts. i'm a little bald guy from the lower east side of manhattan and i make records in my spare bedroom. how have i ended up with the #1 selling album in the world? - Moby ~ My job would be SO much easier if I could utilize the forces of Darkness when necessary... - James DiBenedetto ~ You wouldn't like me when I'm angry Actually, you probably wouldn't like me even when I'm *not* angry. - Rik Burke ~ I note that Fortuyn's party can attribute much of their electoral success to the murder of their leader shortly before the elections. I think I would be fairly happy to see a modest increase in the votes polled by Sinn Fein or the Front Nationale, provided it was obtained under exactly similar circumstances. - Terrapin ~ One telltale sign that you need to go back to the old drawing board on a home plumbing project is if urine and feces are geysering out of the kitchen sink. - The Onion, home improvement tip ~ Is it a bird, is it a plane, oh f*** its a plane - Mark Thackstone ~ Plus, she looks like some kind of freaky mantis-woman, and I keep expecting her to rotate her head 360 degrees, snag a roady in her freakish pipestem arms and bite his head off. - Adam C. Lipscomb, discussing Celine Dion ~ Please remember that downloading MP3s damages the music industry so please do it early, often and cheerfully. - Cathal Coughlan ~ At my last work (well, only work) to get to the stationery room there was a code locked door, 2 swipe card locked doors and 3 key locked doors. I was in the nerve centre of customs surveillance more often than that room. - Martin McGrane ~ if this is his take on romance, it's no wonder he's not married anymore. - Matt Rhodes, On George Lucas' script-writing skills for Star Wars Episode 2 ~ I don't see what C++ has to do with keeping people from shooting themselves in the foot. C++ will happily load the gun, offer you a drink to steady your nerves, and help you aim. - Peter da Silva ~ > By the way, have you heard Boards of Canada? Sounds like whale music would if whales had access to synthesisers. - Paul Walker ~ I'm not sure where I was during the 80s, but it certainly wasn't planet Earth. - Claire Bickell ~ > So my question is this: how does _Neverwhere_ compare to other books by Neil Gaiman? Are all his books this good? Better? Worse? When Neil starts writing cereal box cover, I'll start buying cereal. - Steven Brust ~ The Rock may be better at acting, fighting and posing, but he will never match Arnie's bemused glower, nor the bug-eyed expression of extreme passionate emotion. And of course he will never say "Yu vill dai" with a broad Austrian accent. - Marc Beyer ~ > No doubt quantum mechanics has a clever excuse that has no real world meaning. I thought postmodernism filled that role... - John VanSickle ~ Look, we're still pissed off about the last two world wars, Napoleon, the 100 years war and 1066. If the Roman Empire hadn't collapsed, we'd be annoyed about that Caesar bastard with his dodgy foreign food and his straight roads too... Grudge? What Grudge? - Charlie Bell ~ HA! I'm mailing you FROM MY COUCH! This rocks. Wireless internet may be second only to the Saturn V in coolness. - Jim Battista ~ As somone who works for a credit card company, I highly recommend you take that card and snip it in half. Credit cards are the work of the devil. - Rik Burke ~ I need an "Ooops!" key on this computer... - James Randi ~ I read the first Bridget Jones book and hated it with a passion. I'd rather nail my bollocks to the mast of a sinking ship than read the sequel. - Rik Burke ~ >> How do these support the idea that "Jesus" was a composite of several people? > The Jesus in Matthew had a different grandfather than the one in Luke. Well, don't we all have two grandf...oh, wait, never mind - Rick B ~ Look, for the last time: I am not a nice person. I am malevolent. - Richard Baker ~ Does it have to be correct to be funny? - Lalith Vipulananthan, responding to a correction ~ > They were, of course, Vampire Submariners and not Vampire Slayers. You know, now it makes much more sense... - Adrian Hon ~ As far as I'm concerned, any list that can produce the wonders that are flaming ass filth and Cannabalistic Nazi Vampire Slayers is doing perfectly fine. - Adrian Hon ~ It has it's good and bad points. For example, a good point is you can meet people and make friends who live on the other side of the planet. On the other hand, a bad point is that you can meet people and make friends who live on the other side of the planet... - Charlie Bell, on the merits of the Internet ~ I am Captain of the good ship Rational Thought. Pity about all the mutinies though. - Paul Morrison ~ Except in Boulder, where all living species dine on tofu, trail mix and bottled water, human beings are the only voluntary vegetarians. All other species dine on their favorite foods without a moment's concern about how their favorite foods feel about that. - Roger Ebert ~ I agree that Morlocks look sexy to other members of their gene pool, as do alligators, octupi and boy bands. - Roger Ebert ~ Libraries. Yuck. In the past 12 years I've borrowed three books from the library. - Patrick Gliddon, librarian ~ I'm trying to develop responses to things that annoy me that don't involve the phrases 'nuke the site from orbit', 'I dispatch assassins', or the word 'smite'. Not going so well so far. - Claire Bickell ~ Any discipline that involves the use of statistics is not cool by definition. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I have to be inspiring about the artist's life! I have to talk about how gratifying it is to make a living through your art, at a time when I would blow spider monkeys for $10 an hour if someone offered me the job... - Unknown ~ I have the personality of a throw pillow. - Brad DeLong ~ > and the whole backyard is still under a blanket of snow (major dump on sat night). Some details should really be kept to yourself Roxanne. Honestly! - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I think this deserves a Mwahahahahahaaaaaa! "Mwahahahahahaaaaaa!" - Chris Platts ~ There's no copy protection to worry about with the iPod. But if you break the law, Steve Jobs will turn up at your house, with his face half peeled off Terminator-stylee, and say in a quasi-Austrian accent "I told you not to steal music. I asked you nicely. Why did you disobey me? Don't you like me?" Then he'll activate his Reality Distortion Field to make it so that you were never even born. - Chris Platts ~ I'd forward the URL, but as you know, WSJ.com is a subscription service that's protected by high-tech anti-circumvention technology (in this case, a cookie) and I'm trying to cut back on my DMCA violations. - Andrew Downey ~ If I said at any time that Mozilla 1.0 would have no bugs then I was probably really, really, really drunk or being sarcastic. - Asa Dotzler, Mozilla developer ~ McEnroe was as charming as always, which means that he was as charming as a dead mouse in a loaf of bread. - Clive James ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts. - Clive James ~ She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short. - Clive James, on Marilyn Monroe ~ Scientists should not be allowed to play God. Brian Blessed would be much better. - The Onion ~ I will also be learning Finnish. I already know four words. There'll be no stopping me. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ Why is it "Good" Friday? From Jesus's point of view, I guarantee you it was the *worst* friday He ever had. Why isn't it "Bad" Friday? - Brad DeLong ~ I, for one, am looking forward to celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ by getting riotously pissed. It's what he would have wanted. - Rik Burke ~ Bloody users... the whole IT industry would be better off without them. - R. Lincoln ~ Any message that comes in a weird typeface with strange colors or backgrounds is obviously from an illiterate. - Roger Ebert, discussing email ~ Only an idiot doesn't go into his e-mail preferences and specify Plain Text instead of HTML. This is such a sane use of resources I believe it was actually mentioned in the Kyoto Accord. - Roger Ebert ~ > Muslims and Hindus choking each other while Christians shoot at them and Jews sell festival seating tickets to the event. Hey, I think you've found a lasting solution for Mideast peace. - John VanSickle ~ mental note to self: don't leave the hookers alone in the hotel suite with a new bag of rock. see, im trying to engender some street cred. - Moby ~ I'm curious about who would go to see this movie. Obviously moviegoers with a low opinion of their own taste. It's so obviously what it is that you would require a positive desire to throw away money in order to lose two hours of your life. - Roger Ebert, slamming _Sorority Boys_ ~ If it's this easy to get a screenplay filmed in Hollywood, why did they bother with that Project Greenlight contest? Why not ship all the entries directly to Larry Brezner, Michael Fottrell and Walter Hamada, the producers of "Sorority Boys," who must wear Santa suits to work? - Roger Ebert, slamming _Sorority Boys_ ~ One element of "Sorority Boys" is undeniably good, and that is the title. Pause by the poster on the way into the theater. That will be your high point. - Roger Ebert ~ > The impression I get is that this group is quickly degrading into a bunch of "me too-ers" :( Yes, that's what I think too. - Dennis O'Connor ~ > He's pwecious! Pwecious he is! Elmer Fudd IS Gollum in "Lowd of the Wings". - Catherine Johnson ~ Kittens: self-propelled barbed wire in a dewy-eyed mohair sweater. - Charlie Stross ~ >> Where did all this Christian Soldier stuff come from? I realize "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" was sort of tacked on later, in a battle situation, but why did the war methaphor pop up in a liturgical situation? >> What books of the Bible are a call to arms? > This is a metaphor that has a long and fraught history. Jesus is quoted as saying that he brought not peace but a sword. Indeed, don't forget Simon 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Theology' Peter showing off with his sword in Gethsamene. (Why was he *carrying* a sword?) - John Dean ~ > I always thought "The plural of moron" was "AOL Technical Support" Considering their response time, there's no objective evidence that AOL's tech support consists of any more than one moron. - Bozo The Evil Klown ~ It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. - Woody Allen ~ I am now mailing from the wonderful gorgeous Entourage X and very nice it is too. It cacks all over Outlook 2002 in most respects, for starters (in that, er, it's a markedly better email client. But then, some say sticks are better email clients than Outlook...) - Dan Hon ~ On the first day the Lord our God Eccles wanted a lie in so didn't need much in the way of lights or stuff - Steven Gross, aka Eccles ~ > Don't be so sensitive - Hakon's post bore no resemblance to a flame at all. It's just a discussion. Trust me - in my current state of mind, any e-mail I receive that isn't a massively sympathetic show of support is being classified as a flame. - Brendan Nelson ~ Throwing down the gauntlet? Feh. Currently the only thing you're throwing down in a small child's furry mitten. When you graduate to gauntlets, let me know. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I may be simple, but at least I'm easily amused. - Moby ~ I blame capitalism and patriarchy and, um, you know, that stuff. - Gord Sellar ~ > And I don't like being called Bren either What about Schnookmuffin? Pookie? Widdle Bwennie? Or is it all "Mr. Nelson" from now on? - Amanda Lowery ~ If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother. - Terry Pratchett, on why he writes books ~ What your soldier wants -- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him. - Terry Pratchett ~ 'They can ta'k our live but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker... - Terry Pratchett ~ I'm referred to, I see, as 'the biggest banker in modern publishing'. Now there's a line that needed the celebrated Guardian proof-reading. - Terry Pratchett ~ I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce. - Terry Pratchett ~ There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong. - BSD Fortune ~ i guess information doesn't just want to be free, it also wants permission to frolic and mutate wildly so that it's more interesting, too. - Matt Rhodes ~ Nothing to say, and I'm saying it too loud. - Rik Burke ~ Time for a mood swing, maybe upwards this time - Steven Gross ~ I went to The Grand Cities because I had poked some good-natured fun at the residents. They responded by good-naturedly inviting me up and formally naming a sewage pumping station after me in a ceremony that will forever remain a vivid memory in my mind, even though I have burned my clothes. - Dave Barry ~ After nearly freezing my fingers off filling the car with gas I can't believe I checked out the ice cream section. - Roxanne Dunning ~ > Is it really true that the Chinese eunuch admiral Cheng Ho circumnavigated the globe 80 years before Magellen? Well... I tried to ring him up to check the story but he wasn't in the Beiijing phone book. - Marcus Flavin ~ Irish pubs serve Taytos (real Irish pubs, that is, O'Neill's doesn't count). I miss the tea. And the milk. And the meat. And the beer. And the cheese. And the craic. And the poetry and noble warriors. *trails off into expat insanity, amnesia, and lies* - Fionna O'Sullivan, feeling homesick ~ Canada is a very nice country. 3 cheers for Canada. Neil Young, Mike Meyers, Gun Control, 'safety dance', curling, etc. Nice place, Canada. - Moby ~ In other news...nothing. - Moby ~ Another invention idea that I had would be a flagpole with a fan at the top of it. That way you could flip a switch and a limp flag would suddenly be snapping in the (artificial) breeze. That's a good idea, right? Kind of like viagra for flags. - Moby ~ I had a dream last night wherein I took ecstasy that was licorice flavoured. Do they make flavoured class-a narcotics? Why not? Why not make peppermint flavoured crack? Or orange and lavender flavoured vicadin? Oops, I guess vicadin isn't a class-a narcotic. - Moby ~ Fuck, I'm talking about sports. Don't worry, it won't happen again. - Moby ~ Gene Simmons from Kiss told me in all earnestness that I was 'powerful and attractive.' So for about 10 minutes afterwards I felt powerful and attractive and I think that for the first time in my life I walked without a slouch. But then the slouch returned and the old feelings of low self-esteem kicked back in. Maybe I should have weekly self-esteem boosting sessions with Gene Simmons. - Moby ~ > Now I'm an UNDEAD ZOMBIE and I want your DELICIOUS BRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNSS. > I'd feast on my students by you need to crack a lot of their heads to get a meal worth of brrrrrrrraaaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnsss. Jim, Old chap, have you ever wondered that education is not the ideal profession to pursue? - Mark Thackstone ~ And *I* think they should have an Olypmics where all of the competitors are forcibly given large doses of powerful CIA- level hallucinogens or psychotics. That, or an Olympics where after every lap ya gotta chug a beer. - Jim Battista ~ "A Fantastic Achievement for Scotland!", say the Scots. "A Fantastic Achievement for the UK!" say the English. "A Fantastic Achievement for England!" says the rest of the world. The Welsh keep schtum. - Brendan Nelson, on the 2002 Olympics Curling event ~ 372.09 -It is unlawful for a hunter to wear a disguise as a reporter, accident victim, physician, chiropractor, or tax accountant for the purpose of hunting attorneys. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.08 -If an attorney gains elective office, it is not necessary to have a license to hunt, trap or possess the same. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.07 -It is unlawful to hunt attorneys within 200 yards of courtrooms, law libraries, health clubs, country clubs or hospitals. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.06 -It is unlawful to hunt attorneys within 100 yards of BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche dealerships, except on Wednesday afternoons. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.05 -It is unlawful to shout "WHIPLASH", "AMBULANCE", or "FREE SCOTCH" for the purpose of trapping attorneys. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.04 -It is unlawful to chase, herd or harvest attorneys from a power boat, helicopter or aircraft. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.03 -The willful killing of attorneys with a motor vehicle is prohibited, unless such vehicle is an ambulance being driven in reverse. If an attorney is accidentally struck by a motor vehicle, the dead attorney should be removed to the roadside, and the vehicle should proceed to the nearest car wash. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.02 -Taking of attorneys with traps or dead falls is permitted. The use of United States currency as bait is, however, prohibited. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ 372.01 -Any person with a valid state rodent or armadillo hunting license may also hunt and harvest attorneys for recreational and sporting (non-commercial) purposes. - GunNSpot, Regulations For The Hunting And Harvesting Of Attorneys ~ Also waiting for me was a Sampo DVE-611 DVD player. I saved a short file to a CD-R, put it into the DVD player, which read it and reset itself very happily to Region Zero, thus, at one stroke, voiding the warranty, allowing me to watch British DVDs, and probably setting the FBI on my trail. - Neil Gaiman ~ > Why do you say these things, when you know that I will kill you for it? I love this quote. Got a mean look from my wife when I used it on my four-year old daughter though. - Charles Goodin ~ A million deaths is a statistic. Being hanged, raped, shot, beaten, mutilated or some combination thereof by a timetraveling sociopathic ex-Communist on testosterone-boosting drugs is a tragedy. - Bernard Guerrero ~ > Why was Galadriel so anal about touching the water in her Mirror? What would have happened? Would Sauron has finally seen into Lórien? nah, she just didn't have any extra towels around, and you know what wet hobbit smells like.... - Unknown ~ > Plants generally don't taste like what they grow in, except for those that accumulate Selenium. Plenty of animals pick up flavor from their last meal though. Then make mine Limburger, anchovies, liver & Brussels sprouts. I don't want anyone nibbling on me after I go. - Baron Elgar ~ I bought a very nice hat recently. A trilby. I have no intention of ever wearing it. - Marcus Flavin ~ Perl: the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption - Unknown ~ I’d like to pretend that Kylie Minogue’s stellar performance of Can’t Get You Out Of My Head — performed with 23 dancers dressed as silver aliens and full of glimpses of her bottom — was startling but, frankly, in 2002, you take for granted that Kylie Minogue will turn up with 23 silver aliens, twinkle, and show her bottom. - Caitlin Moran, in The Times ~ I'm a liberal man, but putting anything in whisky except water ought to be a criminal offence. - Marcus Flavin ~ > Someone invited themselves back to my flat for coffee one night last week, and then tried it on! She wasn't all that weird though Bloody hell Brendan, what aftershave are you using at the moment?! Erm, just so I know to avoid it, being taken, obviously. - Rik Burke ~ Windows Media Player thinks my cd lens cleaner is "Night On Bare Mountain". ???? - Charlie Bell ~ I thought I would go as a caricature of myself and that way if people say 'who are you supposed to be?' I could say 'I'm dressed up like moby' and they could say 'wow, you look just like him' and I could maybe borrow money from them or something. - Moby ~ The chance of death improves all sports. - Kevin Tarr ~ The two things that matter the most to me in the work that I do is emotional resonance and rocket launchers. Party of Five, a brilliant show which often made me cry uncontrollably suffered ultimately from the lack of rocket launchers, which 'Innocence' doesn't have a problem with. - Joss Whedon ~ Michael Jackson doesn't look too healthy in person...I stood next to him for a minute, and forgive me for being concerned, but something doesn't seem to be quite right there. - Moby ~ My studio is waiting for me. Beckoning....'Moby, come and work... you're not getting any younger...time waits for no man....carpe diem...etc' My studio actually does say 'etc' to me. - Moby ~ I've never dated a super-model, I've never been a tax-exile, I've never had sex in a limousine, I've never worn leather trousers, I've never beaten up a photographer (ha, ha, the image of me trying to beat up ANYONE is kind of comical, apart from the fact that I'm a pacifist, most of the time anyway, just so long as someone doesn't try to steal the coupons from my sunday newspaper, then it's goodbye pacifist Moby, hello Kick Ass Van Damme), in fact, and this is the hardest thing to admit, I've never had sex with a groupie. - Moby ~ And, in case anyone from the conservative american right wing is reading: all of my songs are actually love songs for Hillary Clinton. And if you play them backwards you can hear little messages, like: 'support planned parenthood', 'lets have more gays in the military', 'marilyn manson, a true American hero',etc. - Moby ~ Admired for his charm, stealing the sherbet fountain did his reputation as a love god no harm - Steven Gross ~ I don't kill flies, cos I'm a fucking hippie. uh-oh, now I'll probably read about myself as an 'eco warrior, born again, vegan, non drinking, space alien, update writing, bald, little, idiotic, hippie.' Another adjective to tack on to the(mainly erroneous) list. - Moby ~ And here's the height of rock-n-roll touring debauchery... We have a treadmill in our dressing room! isn't that decadent? The marquis de sade would be proud, I'm sure. Yesterday we made the treadmill go as fast as it could and then dropped things on it (cups, bananas, a bar stool) and watched them fly across the room. I know, it doesn't hold a candle to motley crue and led zeppelin having sex with 50 groupies a night, but it was still fun. - Moby ~ Sarcasm alert! Sarcasm alert! The [;-)] was a clue. - Kif Kroker ~ I had one of those crackpots accost me in Godalming during the 1997 general election. That was they called themselves the Natural Loony Party, or some such nonsense. He told me that his party's policies included opposition to nuclear energy. "Fusion or fission," queried I. "All forms of nuclear energy," he replied. Whereupon I invited him to put out the sun and advised that it was best done at night to minimize the risk of getting burnt. No wonder we lost India. - James Follett ~ >>> IIRC this was in a story about an actual fluourescent mouse that some scientist had managed to create. >> ITYM rabbit. > Why would a rabbit create a fluourescent mouse? Hawk chaff. - Jason Willoughby ~ > I can't wait for the time when we start to create super flatulent cattle to combat the incipient Ice Age threat. Why settle for combating the Ice Age? Cowherds escorting herds of cattle ready to be turned into methane-based flamethrowers could prove decisive in many combat engagements. Mooo! Mooo! AAAuuuuggghhh! - Brad DeLong ~ Cry Havoc! And Let Loose the Sloths of War! - Brad DeLong ~ There are some things that I should probably keep to myself,,,like the fact that I went to see N*Sync last night at Giants Stadium. - Moby ~ Mental note to self: stay away from absinthe. - Moby ~ I imagine that a video wherein I rolled around on the beach wouldn't be quite as compelling as J-Lo doing the same thing. She's pretty. - Moby ~ And, boy, was today exciting...I went to the dentist and had a filling replaced! Whoo, this rockstar life is so endlessly exciting. And I got to do a whole syringe full of novocaine! And they say that rock and roll debauchery is a thing of the past...they've obviously never seen me in the dentist chair with a big needle pumping novocaine into my jaw. - Moby ~ OK, it's 4pm, and you know what that means..time to do the laundry. As I said earlier, this rockstar life is a non-stop whirlwind of ex-cite-ment. - Moby ~ My advice today: Skylights. Usable roof-tops. Rooftops are so cool. And if you're ever attacked you can pour boiling oil on your attackers from your aerie, like in the good old days of the middle ages. - Moby ~ In the future I'm a viking and my name is 'Lars Pinetree'. And I have a hut. - Moby ~ On my planet ducks are revered as gods. - Moby ~ I think that most politicians are lunatics. - Moby ~ urban colloquialisms employed in the interest of sounding tough... - Moby ~ But what do I know about intellectual property? - Steven Gross, patent examiner ~ Beethoven didn't write with the top 40 in mind. And Bach wrote shit guitar riffs. - Andrew Paul ~ And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat. Right? Of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-nfl linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal. - Moby ~ I wasn't saying, I was just saying. - Amanda Lowery ~ I plan to write a What Would Red Foreman Do self-help book entitled "Self Help For Dumbasses". It's pretty simple: any time you're in a crisis, you ask yourself "What Would Red Foreman Do?", 99% of the time he'd tell you you're being a dumbass...and odds are, he's right! - Amanda Lowery ~ I am a Conscientious Objector to Mobile Phones [IE Am Skint], so it doesn't bother me... However, if I ever feel it necessary to buy one, it will instantly become a matter of National Importance... - Danny Leonard ~ Then, someone phoned our house and asked what we charged for snowboarding lessons. Someone else phoned, we said hello, and the person replied, after a pause, "This isn't a hotel in France is it?" - Jo Richardson ~ I wish I were a parrot, then I'd glow under UV light. - Marc Beyer ~ For every political discussion that takes part on the List, just assume that I consider it to be the US's fault and I'm against it, ok? - Marc Beyer ~ The Arnold character is uncomplicated, loyal, brave and resourceful, and only does six or seven things that are impossible in the physical universe. - Roger Ebert, discussing Schwarzenegger's character in _Collateral Damage_ ~ He is your typical Los Angeles fireman if the fire department sent all of its men through Delta Force training. - Roger Ebert, discussing Schwarzenegger's character in _Collateral Damage_ ~ I saw a Russian documentary once where half the shots were blurred and overexposed, because the KGB attacked the negative with X-rays. Maybe this movie was put through an MRI scan. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Rollerball_ ~ My guess is that something went dreadfully wrong early in the production. Maybe dysentery or mass hypnosis. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Rollerball_ ~ She has a scar over one eye, but is otherwise in great shape, as we can see because the Locker Rooms of the Future are co-ed. Alas, the Women Athletes of the Future still turn their backs to the camera at crucial moments, carry strategically placed towels, stand behind furniture and in general follow the rules first established in 1950s nudist volleyball pictures. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _Rollerball_ ~ I'm inclined to think most culties of all flavours are nuts anyway, not that I'm judgmental or anything. - Amanda Lowery ~ *note to self* corporate credit cards and "quiet nights out" do not go together well. - Rik Burke ~ ...it's a free-form Hegemony, you set your own hours. - Paul Walker ~ You'll soon be hearing those words every parent dreads - "Dad, can I have a Man Utd shirt?" - Danny Gee ~ Clearly we will have to get used to seeing teams of headless clones bulking up at the gym. - Kim Randell ~ > The fundamentalist christian nasties will brand the film anti christian and blasphemous etc. Thereby increasing the attendance by at least 10%. - Paul Walker, on the potential filming of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy ~ I like lathes because radial symmetry is a hobby of mine. - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ Another thing typical of Rap artists I like is their acceptance speeches: "I want to give a shout out to everyone back home, and I want to thank God for getting my single "You's a hoe" to number one, thank you!" - Katherine Hill ~ Ladies and gentleman, we're currently losing cabin pressure and about to plunge into the Atlantic-aaaidleeee-oooiii-hoooohoooo - Clive Potgieter, pondering Swiss airlines and yodeling ~ I didn't mind the Ewoks *so* much in and of themselves. But as a stilted, overdone plot device, and as a poor imitation of The Lord of the Rings (think about it), I was sure hoping that the stormtroopers would start carrying cans of lighter fluid. - Ken McGlothlen ~ Sorry for coarse language, I had linguistic ability and diverse vocabulary once.. but I think I left them on a train once and haven't seen them since. - Matt Hubbard ~ > That is about the time of the Abba song that starts " I have a dream...." > Chris " I had a dream as well" Greville So did I, lots of times. Luckily, I knew how to operate the washing machine, so no-one found out. - John Hatpin ~ HELLO CLEVELAND! We are! BAKLAVA! DEATH! COMMANDOS! *speed metal ensues* - Jim Battista ~ I have to listen to raccoons arguing in the wee hours. Angry raccoons sound like a sped-up recording of cats having sex with Tasmanian Devils. It's not nice to hear while you're dreaming, because then "directed by David Lynch" appears in the credits and then you owe him royalties and everything. - Amanda Lowery ~ Other achievements: Responsible for the development of the MechaDrosophila species. Not responsible for the consequences". - Jo Richardson, listing her achievements ~ I can't be bothered with details like "subtracting correctly," or "wiping properly." - Jim Battista ~ We are Borg. Only fluffier. - Amanda Lowery ~ You lot are all just wrong in the head. I despair, I really do. - Andrew Cunningham, addressing the Culture list ~ I like to think of it as one talent amongst many. I'd be *wrong*, of course, but only in the real world. - Amanda Lowery ~ Let the heathen abase themselves in terror before the might of our Bakhlava Death Commandos. Not even the dark places of the Earth will save them from the Tiramisu Assassin Sect! - Richard Baker, acting odd *again* ~ And don't even get me started on people who describe themselves as vegetarian and then suffix it with "...but I do eat chicken". Such comments make me want to reply "Well, I'm not a violent man, but I am repeatedly smacking you in the face for your gross stupidity". - Rik Burke ~ A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: duh. - Conan O'Brien ~ We must do something before this robot threat gets out of hand! Quick! Someone get me a bunch of semi-naked teenagers! - Phil Hoenig ~ I couldn't be a Jehovah's Witness. I didn't see the accident. - Unknown ~ All we Canadians want to be feared and worshipped, but all we get from the rest is of world is, "You Canadians are so sensible." - Patrick Gliddon ~ To you I'm an athiest, to God I'm the loyal opposition. - Woody Allen ~ Watched a bit of Face/Off again last night but it gets worse with every viewing. The plot is risible to say the least but its not helped by the fact Nic Cage is not an actor and has wondered onto the set by mistake. - Martin Lewis ~ How on earth are we supposed to get a decent ruccus up and running with all this reasoned discussion? Eh? Come on now, I want totally illogical jumps in reason, and wholly unnecessary amounts of bile. - Rik Burke ~ I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up. - Terry Pratchett ~ > Gee, a vegetarian and an anti-semite. A vegimite - Doctor Wu ~ >>> You're overlooking the obvious parallels to events that are taking place even today. A great evil threatens the land, and the various races must come together to form a coalition to destroy it. >> By throwing it into a volcano! Yay! > I don't have a problem throwing bin Laden into a volcano. [:-)] Doesn't that mean he comes back as Darth Laden in the next movie? - Captain Button ~ I like the plain old-fashioned "Jesus" fish, of which there are many in my area, because it helps me identify the drivers who are going to cut me off in traffic without signalling. - Louann Miller ~ The weblog is not the most useless weapon in the War On Terrorism. That title is still held by the nuclear submarine. - Tim Cavanaugh ~ I was often surprised to discover that my employer's employer's employer couldn't spell things like "cat", "dog" and "gewurtsraminer". - Clive Potgieter, distressed at the quality of e-mail he receives ~ This just in: The President of the United States was ATTACKED by gravity just yesterday! A terrorist pretzel, possibly planted by Al-Qeada, employed gravity as its agent to BRING DOWN THE PRESIDENT! Fortunately, alert Secret Service agents wrestled gravity to the ground, and the President escaped with only minor injuries. Film at eleven. - Rhertz ~ > It really is still tough to beat the direct application of significant amounts of high explosives as a way to guide the behavior of others. Try nagging. It seems to work for my mom. - Chad Irby ~ Apparently the mail server I'm set to use is completely down and switched off at this very moment. They have no idea how come I can access the server at all, let alone why I'm getting the particular error codes that I am. My computer has a psychic connection to the net. It totally rocks! - Claire Bickell ~ I'd eat a person, but I wouldn't eat a foetus, because eating foetuses is just icky - Amanda Lowery ~ i might not be able to afford it, i might not know how to work it but i sure as hell want it! - Ashley Silcock, who has discovered a love of gadgets ~ It's not size that's important, it how your legal team silence the witnesses - Steven Gross ~ I once had a fifteen minute conversation with a friend, speaking to him on his mobile. Towards the end of the conversation, he announced "right, you're now going to hear something which will put this whole conversation in perspective", whereupon I was treated to the sound of a flushing toilet. - Rik Burke ~ Two things are not debatable: eroticism, and comedy. If you don't think it's sexy, or funny, there's no way I can change your mind. - Gene Siskel ~ One can tell this is phlogiston by name alone: Iraq Net. It is something one can too easily imagine being delivered at a Richard Clarke-ian security briefing. Vmyths reckons that if there were indeed such a formal thing in an Islamic nation, it would have a little more grandiloquence and zing to its moniker, like 'The Mighty Electronic Sword of Vengeance and Punishment in the Name of Allah' or 'The Iraq-Islamic Committee for the Promotion of Computing Machine-Enabled Call and Combat. - George Smith ~ I believe there is a place in every home for OC-768 connectivity. I belive every thinking, breathing human being has the right to download in one second more pornographic material than they could consume in a year. - Clive Potgieter ~ the thing i love about jersey (sorry, joisey) is that it's the only state in the union that you have to pay to get out of. every major highway has a tollbooth at the border. you don't always have to pay to get in, though. i guess they figured that nobody would really want to do that. but i gladly pay every time i have to leave that state. - Matt Rhodes ~ Now, if I had a handheld with a Java compiler, that would be schweet. Then I could write a Perl interpretter in Java. Imagine - interpreted interpreted interpreted code, or something to that effect. - Clive Potgieter ~ le wi wi wi wi le wi ooo ooo ooo. If monkeys could speak, they'd speak french. - Clive Potgieter, international diplomat ~ The novelty of constantly arriving home at 7pm had begun to wane. - Clive Potgieter, not a workaholic ~ I still haven't figured out why the turnpike has exits. As far as I'm aware, other than passage between Philadelphia, D.C., and New York, there's never any reason to be in New Jersey. - Evan Vetere ~ Oh! Look at the rugby plyer! 'E's YOORintating on Terri, aww, what a BEAUT! - Jim Battista, channelling Steve Irwin ~ I have a really bad cold. I don't get them often but when I do they make me feel like the living dead (but without all the cool powers!). - Richard Baker ~ > admit it, though. you destroyed all the prototypes in backyard bonfires, didn't you? I object! I haven't set fire to anything for... days. - Richard Baker, pyromaniac ~ Will whiskey help? Let's find out. - Brain Kantor ~ > I think we would have more chance of signing the pope as our next centre forward than either of these two. Don't be stupid, everyone knows the pope is a goalie - Greg McCarroll ~ Have I told you about my magnum opus? _Toast_, starring a piece of toast on a plate. The soundtrack is the _Star Trek_ fight sequence music. I'm going to get the National Film Board to pay for it. It's a starkly minimalist short film/performance art piece hinting at the hollowness of modern urban society in relation to the schadenfreude meme, a phenomenon (ma-num-a-num) of contemporary times. And there's toast! - Amanda Lowery, getting all arty ~ > Currently starting on Moonseed, since that's the unknown - surprise gift, and I've not read any Baxter before. It rawks. If you like hard SF with big explosions in a book that screams "Direct me, Jerry Bruckheimer! Make me your summer box-office smash hit!" then this is it - Dan Hon ~ Jesus saves! Allah protects! And Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich! - Unknown ~ I've always believed that if the US Government were ever to get really serious about Internet security, the top players in Microsoft's management hierarchy would find themselves handcuffed, blindfolded, led onto a tarmac within some obscure Air Force base, and shot. - Thomas Greene ~ How about Predator meets Star Trek. In each episode a character from a previous series is hunted down by a Predator. For the series finale any surviving characters are dropped in a hive of Aliens and given the false impression that there is a way out. - Martin McGrane, suggesting a way to spice up the Star Trek series ~ It sort of bothers me that even on Expert you can wallop the last guy in a three man patrol, dump the body in a handy alley, wallop the second guy when the patrol comes round again, dump the body... and the leader obliging comes around on his own, and doesn't seem to worry about what happened to Bill and Charlie... - Terry Pratchett, his opinion on the A.I. in Thief 2 ~ The stats: US$: 260Million users. Euro: 300Million users, to increase by 100Million within five years. I'd say that Dubya had better start learning diplomacy. - Mark Wallace ~ > The most widespread complaint among both Tolkien fans and non-Tolkien fans is that the film relied far too much on action scenes and did not spend enough time slowing down and exploring the characters. I also think it needed more full-frontal nudity. - Matt Ruff ~ Some use nuclear weapons, some use germ warfare, we have Céline Dion. - Ann Cornellier ~ But the main thing that narks me off is the pitiful flaming style you employ. I'm a big fan of massively offensive and profane flames, and have dished out some vitriol that would make your toes curl. I have respect for the masters of that art. In your case, though, some sort of flaming remedial school would probably be appropriate. I mean, the typos are there, the references to homosexuality are there, but there's no wit, and there's too much repetition. I'm a member of the FC Troll Approval Panel, and with that authority vested in me I feel I can give you a rating of 0.2/10. Next! - Brendan Nelson ~ I'm hip like that, I'm fly like that, I'm pedantic like that, I'm retentive like that. biddy biddy bop, biddy biddy bop, get funky funk - Clive Potgieter ~ Don't trust developers who compile compilers using the compiler they're busy compiling. - Clive Potgieter ~ I'm going to build my own Segway with sewing machine parts, tractor tyres and a V8 motor. - Clive Potgieter ~ Of course, to make a movie my way is commercial suicide. A movie these days needs to be made so the audience can understand it immediately without thinking about it at all, or even being conscious that they're watching it. - Robert Altman ~ You know the joke about how so many Southerners' last words are "Hey, y'all, lookit this!"? It's not a joke. Even intelligent men seem to lose reasoning ability when allowed access to fire and things that go boom. More than once a recalcitrant firework was approached after being lit and prodded to see if'n it was daid or jest restin'... they were always jest restin'." - Jim Battista ~ Tuna eyeballs! I just watched a man cook tuna eyeballs and serve them to other people! And I watched those other people eat them! KNOWING FULL WELL that they were eating tuna eyeballs! - Bill Livingston ~ Vanilla Sky gets 1 1/2 Babylons. Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz both spend an adequate amount of time naked and in bed, though not with each other, which would have given the flick another 1/2 Babylon or so. - The Self-Made Critic ~ The problem with becoming incredibly powerful in Hollywood is that eventually you make a movie like Vanilla Sky. - The Self-Made Critic ~ The site of Cleopatra's library, precisely 1 mile away by my GPS, is viewed with cautious approval by guidebook writers because it is an actual ruin with a wall around it, a ticket booth, old stuff, and guides. It is right next to an active Muslim cemetery, so it is difficult to reach the place without excusing your way past crowds of women in voluminous black garments, wailing and sobbing heartrendingly, which all goes to make the Western tourist feel like even more of a penis than usual. - Neal Stephenson ~ Yeah, but who wants to live on the Moon? Seems like everyone wants to go to Mars these days instead, despite the considerably worse TV re-ception there. - Ool ~ Just because it's in print, or on TV, or on the internet does not make it true. - Ian Stirling ~ Fear Nothing Trust in Serendipity Have a Good Time - Robert Seeberger ~ So there you have it: At long last, scientists have found a way, using condoms, to make poison frogs angry. I know I speak for all humanity when I say to the scientific community, by way of sincere gratitude: Please stop - Dave Barry ~ > To make a cigarette (or "joint") out of marijuana, it's much cheaper to "mix" it with "tobacco". You get the "high", and you get the "burn", which means you can "smoke" the "joint" down to the "butt" without "worrying" about the cost so much. If you "rolled" a "joint" purely with "marijuana" (also known as "grass"), you'd end up with a "joint" that costs a "shit-load" of money, and which would lose most of its "psychoactive" ingredients to the "atmosphere" that surrounds "Planet Earth". So, "hippies" mixed "grass" with "tobacco" to get their "highs" without running up an "overdraft" at the "bank", "tobacco" being a "cheaper" substance. There won't be another shipment of quote marks until after the new year. Now that they're used up, all posts will have to be original and uninflected until the next batch arrives. - Kay W ~ You would think that a full beard would be the easiest thing in the world. There's nothing to do but let that fucker grow and use the money you're saving on razors to influence senators. - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ What is it with the beard thing.. honestly. Give a man a beard and he thinks he rules the world... add sandals to that and suddenly they become a unix expert. - Matt Hubbard ~ > Why will no one blame the virus writers. Blaming Microsoft is like blaming the contractor who built a person who's home that was burglarized because the contractor did not install solid steel doors and bullet proof windows. No, it's like blaming the contractor for building a house that doesn't have locks in the doors, and to put locks in you have to replace the whole door with a new one, except that if you do that then you're suddenly unable to install new lightbulbs when the old ones go bad because the automatic lightbulb-replacement agent can't get in the door and the only source for lightbulbs that fit your sockets is the original contractor who won't sell the bulbs to you because you're supposed to use the automatic lightbulb-replacement agent. - Todd Knarr ~ Plus points: Leather, chicks in leather, chicks in leather with guns. - Steven Gross, recommending Farscape ~ I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. - Christopher Walken ~ If I had two breast to play with, I'd NEVER get bored, hell I'd be happy with just one in a cardboard box which I could lift the lid every now and then just to take a peak... I've said too much again, haven't I? - Steven Gross ~ And Eccles did come down the mountain carrying the ten commandments and did proclaim himself to be annoyed that he couldn't email everyone rather than stand there like a complete prune while everyone else was worshiping graven images. - Steven Gross, aka Eccles ~ Scientists should never be allowed to play God - that's Charlton Heston's job. - Brendan Nelson ~ > When is someone going to mention the morons? What does Congress have to do with it? - Dana Carpender ~ > Not all books are good. Bang goes another illusion. Now all I have left is Santa Claus. - Padraig Breathnach ~ COBOL has almost advanced to the level of Morse Code. - Hank Zimmerman ~ I will treasure, for all the wrong reasons, the following exchange that took place on this tour. A young lady opened TLH at the picture of Ponder Stibbons and said triumphantly: "That's a blatant reference to Harry Potter, right?" I politely referred her to The Pratchett Portfolio, pub.1996. She gave them some thought, and then said: "Okay, then it's a coincidence." The logic is impeccable. - Terry Pratchett ~ For enough money, I'd be stupid. - Terry Pratchett ~ So, I'm mooching about, generally concussing people and getting quite a lot of loot. - Terry Pratchett, describing his progress in Thief: The Dark Project ~ I find it absurd that there are hardly any non-denominational schools here, and undoing the damage caused by an "education" in a Catholic school took me a lot of time for which I'd quite like to invoice someone. - Brendan Nelson ~ She wanted a HOLIDAY in Australia, she said, and if I turned it into work she'd hit me -- so I gave in, because I did not want to be beaten about the Bush. - Terry Pratchett ~ > What advice would you give to writers? Write. Finish things. - Neil Gaiman ~ Hey don't knock Outlook, it's a fantastic product, I love it to bits and hope it goes on to dominate the world even more! I am however a security consultant by trade. - Ian Rawlings ~ > There's no known cure, and the best way to deal with the sufferers is to do to them what the British government did to livestock infected with foot and mouth. Cut him up and feed him to the Irish? - Robot Karate Man ~ This newsgroup is dedicated to trading pictures of nubile women by encoding the actual pixel information in superficially meaningful words. For example, this post represents the upper left corner of a nipple. Do you have any other questions? - L. Petrazickis ~ I don't want dull sections in an action film - I want big angry bugs ripping people apart before having their legs blown off one by one by a heroic soldier who then runs out of ammo and has to leap in screaming with a bowie knife to finish the job. Now *thats* action. - Rik Burke, discussing the movie _Starship Troopers_ ~ Fluent in two languages, english and bad english! - Steven Gross ~ And it could have withstood more Zulu-style rampaging hordes of bugs, and less Denise Richards pouting her way round space, IMHO. - Rik Burke, discussing the movie _Starship Troopers_ ~ > I don't hate America, or Americans. I just pointed out that from an external viewpoint, the American public are largely loud and ignorant. The only people arguing the point are Americans. WE ARE NOT LOUD NOR INGNOR...INGNOR...WELL WE AREN'T THAT WORD!!! - Dave Henrie ~ > I'm a bit of a radical, so bare with me. Sorry, I'm not _that_ radical. - Jim Hill ~ So you start with kiddie books, which are bright pictures and small amounts of text, and then move to more "grown up" books, where there are fewer pictures and more text, and then you move to more "grown up" books yet, which are behind a barrier, wraped in plastic, and have, well, lots of pictures and just a little text.... - Stremler ~ Made my first citizens arrest today. There I was in ASDA buying this weeks radio times again [...] when I see this dodgy looking bloke in a beard instilling fanatical and dangerous religious ideals into the minds of youngsters. I look at him and do a double take. Long beard, dodgy religious belief system, Osanta bin laden! Whereupon I saved the youngsters from a severe fundamentalist capitalist brainwashing and dragged the infidel to an international war crimes commission. The elves of course insisted on fighting to the death, so I had to call in a US air strike, messy. - Steven Gross ~ > Look and feel is very important. bowmp-chikka-whomp-BOWMP! - Jim Battista, once again demonstrating a dirty mind ~ > CERT.org has been down for awhile now. A news item I missed maybe? Didn't you get the memo? All software has been declared secure, thus no need for CERT - FrozenNorth ~ >> But surely it makes desktops look more 'jazzy' and 'sexy'! > And? I want to use the desktop, not stare at it and masturbate all day. If one considers what the #1 business on the net is, it would seem you are outvoted. - Robert Seeberger ~ Yes ... but there's a difference between doing all of that because you have some idea what you're doing, and just doing it because you're a twat. To use the technical terms. - Paul Walker ~ Twenty two, eh? Ah, I remember being 22...back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. All this was fields back then you know, and you could get all your week's groceries, a pint, and still have enough change for a seat at the cinema for just a penny...etc etc etc... - Rik Burke ~ I blame the American media and "Sex in the city" in particular. - Katarina Rundgren ~ Delta Burqa - Islamic dress for the full-figured woman - Lars Eighner ~ I had a teacher once, and if we asked him, "Did you get your hair cut?" he would say, "RRRAAARGH!!! FUCK YOU, YOU LITTLE ARSE-PUNCHING SHIT-FUCKER!!! SUCK MY HAIRY GONADS!!! WATCH ME STICK A FERRET UP MY CRACK!!!" Then he would strip naked and have sex with the floor while beating one of us with a dead cat. They fired him. - Panic ~ > what's wrong with cranberries? Perhaps it is their inclincation to congregate in a congealed mass reminiscent of a gangland massacre. - Jean ~ When I win the lottery, I'm going to fund a Wile E. Coyote Chair of Applied Engineering at some university, I am... - William Starr ~ The job *I* want is working for one of the filter companies, identifying all the porn sites.... - James Nicoll ~ > *very bright eyed* I HAD AN EXTRA LARGE COFFEE FOR BREAKFAST! Was it bigger than your head? If not, it was just a medium-large. At least here in Merka. Extra-large means a Double Mega Gulp, that has tides. - Jim Battista ~ I'm going to write an alternative to Excel in LOGO. Move turtle $A1:$C2 - Clive Potgieter ~ If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate. - Steven Wright ~ MY BRAIN AER VERRY SMORL. - Clive Potgieter ~ > So what do you call "bellbottoms" now? Jamie says they are called "flare" leg pants A rose by any other name is still the ugliest freaking style of pants in the universe. - Unknown ~ The spam wars are about rendering email useless for unsolicited advertising before unsolicited advertising renders email useless for communication. - Walter Dnes/Jeff Wynn ~ I have a longstanding agreement with tequila: I won't drink it, and it won't make me sick. - Brian Kantor ~ I like fighter planes because they look like sharks, only they can fly and have far more impressive guns. And I like the F-117 because it looks like it was made out of black construction paper, taped together, then stepped on accidentally. Badgers are cool because not much will mess with a badger. They're like the animal equivalent of John Gotti. - Amanda Lowery, who apparently likes stuff ~ the decline of Western civilisation will be marked by future historians as the day "Joe Dirt" was released. - Andrew Frost ~ > Oh yeah and what is the difference between duron, thunderbird and athlon? I don't know but one sounds like a barrier contraceptive, one a plastic puppet and one a steroid. I would advise you not to make use of all three at the same time, it could be painful and embarrassing. - Jo Richardson ~ In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better. - Unknown ~ Finally, I have actually doomed someone to failure... A student in my intro-American-government class got a 20/100 on the second midterm. This on a multiple-guess test with 4 items -- he or she (defending the moron's anonymity) actually did *worse* than random guessing should lead to. - Jim Battista, compassionate lecturer ~ The thing that makes me mad is that we have satellites and all this technology and people would rather believe this guy with a beret from the 16th Century. - Fritz Coleman, on Nostradamus ~ There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong. - H.L. Mencken ~ > no matter how good you are or how hard you try to live according to the Sermon on the Mount, you are doomed and damned forever because you lack Divine Grace! The correct response to which is either "fuck that for a game of soldiers", or "in that case I might as well be *BAD* anyway"... - Paul Walker ~ James Hale had a very odd impression of what I would be like from my writing. He thought I must be a complete psycho - Iain Banks ~ For the record, here in the United States, we do not have an official court jester. We have Congress. - Dave Barry ~ My ex had a kidney stone once. As he was lying on a gurney in the hospital in extreme pain a less-than-solicitous (i.e. "bitchy") nurse wandered past and said "Now you know what it's like to have a baby". He said "I'll name the stone after you". - Amanda Lowery ~ It's amazing what you can put up with in a flick if it has incredibly blisteringly hot lesbian sex scenes. - The Self-Made Critic ~ Also in attendance was Pat Sharp, of Funhouse fame, and Hear'Say. Given that I would rather strap myself to the inside of a rapidly rotating object which goes upside-down and exerts significant g-forces than listen to Hear'Say, that's exactly what I did. - Adrian Hon ~ so many names in London sound as if they were made up by John Cleese for purposes of amusement... - Brad DeLong ~ There's no problem so serious that Government, acting with the best of intentions, can't make worse. - Unknown ~ > now I've got "Buddy Holly" stuck in my head. That happened to me once. It was the last time I ever went ice fishing in Clear Lake, Iowa. - Gareth Owen ~ "Je suis le champignon de sport du chambre!" (I am the mushroom of bed-sports) "Mi aerodeslizador es lleno de anguilas!!" (my hovercraft is full of eels) "Prenez-moi, monsieur Richard, je ne peut pas attendre jusqu' au djeuner" (Take me, sir Richard, I cannot wait til lunchtime) - Jim Battista, providing some helpful translations ~ I don't have a great deal of respect for Bush. I just don't think he's a very intelligent man, and I don't think he'd last five minutes on this List. Even if he had the Google Toolbar and a 120wpm typist on his side! - Brendan Nelson ~ >> Were there, like, explosions and stuff? > Sure, if you want. And Denise Richards and Juliette Lewis discussing superstring theory and making out? - Richard Baker ~ I always seem to do that double take thing. You know, meet beautiful stranger, say something dickless then think of something really witty and erudite to say about five minutes later. - Steven Gross ~ I hope there is a nice lovingly drawn out and detailed scene featuring Jar Jar and an interrogation droid. Maybe it can jab that syringe into his tongue. It could be a sort of Clockwork Jar Jar thingy. If EPII turns out to be nothing more than yet another sappy melodrama with great special effects then I'll still pay to see it if there is a decent torture Jar Jar scene. - Dmaxwell ~ Maybe I've become numb to such teasing in my old age, but the trailer did nothing to whet my appetite. The least they could have done was included a cutaway shot of Natalie's robe falling to the floor, just before her bare, firm buttocks appeared. I just teased myself into petrification. I'll be back in a few minutes." - Knunov, his opinion on the Star Wars Episode 2 teaser ~ In todays movie industry, a trailer is the Cliff Notes version of the movie. - Chairboy ~ Ooh, just found site with WinXP gaming benchmarks as opposed to Win98 + Win2K - vital enterprise IT resource, this. - Clive Potgieter ~ Coincidentally, if I persuade myself to get a degree in Theology at some point, I would thus become: D. Hon D. Hons. Which is rather nifty and nearly worth it in itself! - Dan Hon ~ Still on my first "real" game... I'm the Russians... well, actually I'm Grand Wizard Jimbo of the Cromulent empire of the Iron Chefs, but still. - Jim Battista, playing CivIII ~ > Would hate to see some folks reaction to snow falling. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, no, wait, it's coming at me, it must mean I'm at warp factor 9, yeah, right, full speed ahead, Mr. Data! - Diane Weber ~ > I vote for covering all politicians with cat litter, and let the voters dig them out, if inclined. You are aware, I'm sure, that most voters wouldn't want to work that hard. Of course you are! I endorse your program. - David Loftus ~ > Just because something is inherently kosher, it still has to be prepared in a kosher manor. Must have been a mongrel carrying those bloody big houses through the Wilderness of Sin for 40 years. - Ian Davis ~ I try to make computers say things like "You have 60 seconds to achieve safe distance". - Terry Pratchett ~ Guess what I'm holding in my had right now? CivIII, that's what! Unlike YOU THIEVING BASTARDS, I actually bought the damn thing (which is to say I didn't know from whence to steal it). - Jim Battista ~ Leeds - a genteel, sophisticated, law abiding football team who are managed by a nice humble man and supported by nice non-racist fans. - Nigel, being ironic ~ > Hang about, this is dangerously on topic. Ah, Culture. The only list where one gets *on* topic warnings. - Kat Feete ~ > What's the right way to address nail clippers? A pair of nail clippers, A nail clippers, or a nail clipper? "Lethal weapon of mass destruction" - Simon Hughes ~ Cat pee, I have come to learn, is the most hard to get rid of smell in the universe. Come the apocalypse there will be cockroaches, Keith Richards and the faint smell of cat pee. - Margaret Young ~ > I've seen news reports that the PO is going to irradiate the mail with gamma rays. [snip] HULK DELIVER THROUGH SLEET! HULK DELIVER THROUGH RAIN! HULK SMASH GLOOM OF NIGHT!!!! - Tom R ~ > Did anyone else feel their house shake about 16:25 today? I nearly crapped myself. Cause or effect? - David Quinton ~ So of course Abbey is crushed, and so are we, because we realize we are in the grip of a power greater than ourselves -- Hollywood's determination to make films at the level of remedial reading. No one involved in the making of this film is as stupid as the characters, so why do they think the audience is? - Roger Ebert, reviewing _On The Line_ ~ The only button this movie needs more than pause is delete. - Roger Ebert, reviewing _13 Ghosts_ ~ If the gods don't come along then it's obviously not a saga worth videotaping. - Roxanne Dunning ~ > That was Amba reborn as Shikandi, then Arjuna turning into Sairandhari in the same lifetime and Krishna's frequent changes to get past Radha's husband.... Wow. And people thought Dallas was bad... - Paul Walker ~ It turned cold today; the winter that had been hanging around the edges of things happened simply and easily and much, much too early, and it started to snow. Well, not to snow, exactly, but occasional snowflakes would tumble and glitter, with a sort of "we may not look like much now, but wait until we come back with our friends" kind of quality to them. - Neil Gaiman ~ "I'm not kidding, Dad, there's water coming out of the wall!" he told me. I opened a bleary eye. I'm rather an expert in plumbing issues, and to my professional ear, something about "water coming out of the wall" didn't sound good. - W. Bruce Cameron, http://www.wbrucecameron.com/ ~ >> Ye real olde days of Demon Internet were the Demon DOS package, which I used for years, including ports of it to OS/2 later on. [cont. "3 Yorkshiremen" threads passim] > DOS? You were lucky to 'ave DOS! My first Internet-connected machine was a single transistor pushed into a slice of brown bread. No, no, no - you're supposed to claim something *more* primitive than the previous speaker. - John Winters ~ Actually, you'd think that people who open mail attachments would be slightly more suspicious. It's kinda like being posted a parcel from god knows who that's wrapped rather haphazardly, has a Trenton postmark, is leaking white powder *and* ticks. And doesn't do anything when you open it. - Dan Hon ~ Punditry is to intellectual life as fast food is to fine cuisine. - Todd Gitlin ~ > I had accomplished Manly tasks with Tools and all appliances worked safely. Wooo! Check out the Y chromosome on Gryffyd! - Amanda Lowery ~ Oh my God, I just went to the cinema today, and saw the Lord of the Rings trailer. It was amazing! It's given me a new reason to look both ways before I cross the road. - Spacelem ~ > (Of course, the best way to get accurate information on Usenet is to post something wrong and wait for corrections. That's right. Abraham Lincoln said that. - Louann Miller ~ By the end of the first season of "Enterprise," they will have done enough damage to the timeline that, a century hence, James T. Kirk is a temp clerk in a Wisconsin cheese shop..... - Bozo The Evil Klown ~ This is the time of year when Americans make a sincere effort to care about the World Series, which determines which baseball team will be the champion of the entire world, except for the part of the world located outside the United States and southeastern Canada. - Dave Barry ~ > I've always liked llamas (even though they seem to have an unhealthy fascination with my dog) I can honestly say this is not a phrase I ever expected to read... - Paul Walker ~ On the scale from left to right, I rank myself modestly as "above" - Marc Beyer ~ Am I the only person in the world who wonders where Pentagon people get their words from? Is there a man there who makes them up, and all the others just copy him? I was listening to a briefing on NPR a couple of days ago, and one of them used the world "degradated" to explain what the bombs had done to terrorist training facilities, obviously under the impression that we were in need of a cool new word to indicatate the degradation of something. We have a perfectly good one, of course, already, in "degraded". But someone at the Pentagon added that extra syllable, and now -- I mean, at this present moment in time -- they will all use it whenever they talk. Um, make that conversate. - Neil Gaiman ~ In transit right now, so a short post to say that, yes, we do know the FAQs are coming out black on black right now, and, no, we aren't just doing it because we thought it would look cool. This is not frustrating stylishness, as several of you seem to think; this is just a common-or-garden cock up. But you can think it's style if you like... - Neil Gaiman, discusses the design of his web page ~ Yesterday I went to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival to watch a seven year old daughter play the violin in public. People put money into her basket. She smiled at them very sweetly, and kept on playing. It’s good to know I have a back-up plan if this writing lark falls to pieces. - Neil Gaiman ~ There is no earthly reason this movie is rated R. The flywheels at the MPAA have taken flight from the values of the world we inhabit. - Roger Ebert, reviewing "My First Mister" ~ My fridge will not be internet enabled until there is downloadable food. My oven gets a connection when it can actually follow a recipe without help. Until then the net can stay out of the kitchen. I have a similar problem with online banking - they refuse to ship a cash dispenser peripheral and my printer isn't up to the job either. - Steve O'Hara-Smith ~ > In my restaurants, I've served lion, hippo, bear, snake, boar, llama, alligator, elk, buffalo, venison. Any chance of a table for two humans? I mean, come on. Who's your maitre d'? Gary Larson? - Alan Hope ~ > AND HUNDREDS MORE OF THE HOTTEST STARS NAKED OH BOY! Can I get photos of Altair and Proxima Centauri? - Larry Kirby ~ Your computer is part of the LAN and thus you can share files and printers and such with your friends. More importantly, you can kill them. - Jim Tooley ~ > But, equally, you have as much right to express your opinion as anyone else too. In fact, it's your duty to do so, to keep the list balanced. But that means that I have to actually maybe think about things in order to write replies, and I don't want to do that... - Paul Walker ~ The BBC website at weekends is good for a laugh as well. Sometimes I come across paragraphs which are so poorly written it is quite impossible to derive any meaning from them. It would appear that, between Friday and Monday, the BBC news website is subbed by the Teletubbies. - Brendan Nelson ~ ... a language is just an dialect with an army and a navy. - Paul Tomblin ~ There are no problems that cannot be solved by the judicious use of high explosives. - Unknown ~ I Have Friends In Detroit And So Probably Shouldn't Have Nuked It - Richard Baker ~ The American legal system is of course just the British kernel with a shorter uptime and a few clumsy security patches slapped in. So whenever a rogue US attempts to buffer-overflow some civil liberties, rest assured our Parliament probably dumped core on it a *long* time ago. - NTK ~ Simple form of the 3 laws of thermodynamics: 1. You can't win, 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't get out of the game. - Unknown ~ > Wow, thanks for clearing that up, you know-nothing waste case. Mom? - Tor Gunston ~ > And why does St David say 'Toona' instead of 'Tew-na'? sounds American where they insist on saying Tuna Fish, just in case you confuse it with the well known tuna cow, tuca cat or tuna pigeon. - Unknown ~ How come every American interviewed on telly sounds like an anchorman/woman, with the exception of the people on the Jerry Springer (Howard Sykes) Show? - Cally ~ A freelance journalist friend of mine makes a substantial proportion of her money from doing media training for IT companies. But she's very ambivalent about it - she once said to me: "I don't want them trained and confident, I want them to be gibbering idiots who'll tell me whatever I want them to." - Adam Lawrence ~ My lab supervisor doesn't believe in getting to the lab before 10am. I knew I applied to the right place. - Jo Richardson ~ One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five, um, something. Six the man in the washing machine. No wait, that's the wrong rhyme. - Jo Richardson ~ And in other news, at least thirty Jedi became more powerful than we can possibly imagine during skirmishes with Clone forces near Dantooine... - Richard Baker, points out a flaw in the Star Wars mythology ~ Another advantage of playing games at a LANParty is the LAN itself, which stands for "Local Area Network." As opposed to the Internet, which stands for "Really really big area network slowed down by people actually trying to do productive things like research." - Fargo ~ > The promise is even better - 72 self-renewing virgins - i.e. they become virgins again after sex, so they are pure every single time. One wonders what the tire companies could do with that technology. - Hemlock Soames ~ I picked up a copy of the Simpsons Complete First Season DVD set. This is quite possibly the single most important possession anyone might ever have. - Jim Battista ~ I wasn't trying to be a complete arse. It just looks that way. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ I'm having a hard job printing out CVs and covering letters when my printer isn't attached to my computer in any way. - Martin Lewis ~ I've gotten spam that draws phony gift certificates on my screen, spam that claims to be opt-in newsletters, and spam that is so nasty, I had to delete it, delete my deleted items folder, empty my recycle bin, and take a shower before proceeding with my work. - Dana Blankenhorn ~ I have a 3 year old. He'll have filtering software on his machine until he's at least thirteen or until he figures out how to disable it. If he's savvy enough to outgeek his dad who's been geeking for over 20 years more than him, then he deserves his porn. - Alex Johns ~ > In programming you have to learn 2 things, Code and Patience. And banging your forehead on the keyboard does not help. - Dennis Evans ~ I revel some but not nearly enough to get up on stage. In fact, the amount of drunken revelry required to get me on stage in a karaoke bar would probably also send me into a coma. - Joe Lavin ~ You would think the Gucci people would have a bouncer at the door, but amazingly they let me walk right in. What are they thinking? After all, what if I break something? There's no way the credit limit on my Visa card could possibly cover the cost of anything I might knock over. - Joe Lavin ~ Mail me offlist (in plain text, or you DIE! ;o) ) - Charlie Bell ~ >> I'll see your haggis and raise you baloutes in Nuc Mam sauce. > I'll see the balouts and raise you fermented walrus blubber. I'll see none of them because I can already feel my lunch raise. - Jens Kilian ~ Dreaming is that thing that sometimes happens when you lay of the caffeine for long enough to lose conciousness. - Molf ~ The President has asked that we unite for a common cause. Since the hard-line Islamic people can not stand nudity, and consider it a sin to see a naked woman that is not their wife, tonight at 7:00, all women should run out of their house naked to help weed out the terrorists. The United States appreciates your efforts, and applauds you. God bless America. - Arthur Levesque ~ > Secondly, we haven't yet fired up the burners on Mars necessary to establish a good greenhouse effect. Baked beans, that's what you need. - Brian J Goggin ~ You know what Jeffrey Dahmer said to Lorena Bobbit? "You gonna eat that?" - Unknown ~ > Wow, first Lou Gehrig contracts Lou Gehrig's disease, and then Jackie Robinson wins the Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award. > What are the chances? Two such occurrences could be a coincidence, but Tommy John needing Tommy John surgery is enough to cause one to suspect some kind of conspiracy. I suggest that they rename the Maryland Lotto "Dan Szymborski's Money." - Dan Szymborski ~ > Cameras and the taking of photographs of the human form are prohibited by the Taliban. That's One Way of Resolving the National ID Card Debate - Brad DeLong ~ Note: The movie has an R rating because its high school kids talk and drink beer exactly like high school kids. - Roger Ebert, subtley criticising the movie rating system again ~ All told, The Princess Diaries delivers a wonderful time for all. Go see it, you'll probably come away with an innocent smile on your face. And if it's not innocent, then you're probably looking ahead to the movies Anne Hathaway makes when she gets just a little older... - The Self-Made Critic ~ It's tough when a download finishes before you've stopped clicking on the link. - Gregg MacArthur, on his high-speed internet connection ~ Turnip Townsend, crop rotation, clover. There was something fundamentally shit about only learning about the agricultural/industrial revolution. Where were the Egyptians and knights and Nazis? - Martin Lewis, on his school education ~ Ok, The following comes from David Icke, and therefore is about as sane as spot welding a goose to a moving vehicle. - John Best ~ It doesn't say that you will spend the afterlife in the company of 48 ex-virgins. It says that you will spend it in the company of 48 virgins. As far as an afterlife of hedonistic delight is concerned, isn't there something wrong with this picture? - Brad DeLong ~ Hindsight is always 20-20. Except when your prescription still sucks like mine. - Lalith Vipulananthan ~ > Can't live without beer. Now I run about 20-30 miles a week just so I can drink beer ... Wouldn't it be easier to move nearer the pub ??? - Unknown ~ An active volcano is about as close to a "hell" as I ever want to get... Where I want to be during a volcanic erruption is like where you are supposed to be during an atomic attack: Where you can look over your shoulder and say "What was that???" - Charles Richmond ~ I heard a rumor that the host of the Weakest Link TV quiz show has joined the SAS and is even now somewhere in Afghanistan ready to kick butt and take names (or the British equivalent thereof). I'd like to see them try to make HER wear burkha! A sneer that can slay at 20 paces! - Unknown ~ > You are now the proud recipient of the Third Annual Matt Ruff non-sequiter award. Yeah, but they're not *green* bananas. - Matt Ruff ~ Paragraph 750. Pizza. Selling, giving away, or causing to be sold or given away pizza that has pineapple on it constitutes a class B felony. Violators may be fined up to $10,000 and/or sentenced to up to 10 years in prison (5 years in rehabilitation for juvenile offenders) for creating a public health hazard. - Unknown ~ > Have you not read the Book of Matthew, to which I'm pretty certain Mr Bush was alluding? When Jesus Christ said, "He who is not with Me is against Me", which amounts to the same thing Bush said, was this a linguistic or a cultural fuck-up? Jesus didn't have nukes. - Brian J Goggin ~ Reportely overheard at a recent press conference: Bush: "I'll be relying on U.S. Intelligence." Powell: "Oh fuck." - Michael O'Neill ~ My friend graham had his copy of Driver 2 damaged by his cousin, and took it back to HMV Edinburgh. "It doesn't work" "Why not?" "My cousin stepped on it" "Oh well, have a new one..." The real madness being that he bought the first copy from Virgin... - Andrew Cunningham ~ Oh, I didn't tell the List. Because of Kurdish protestors where I work we got the X-ray machines and metal detectors out. The X-ray machine is absolutely brilliant, the detail is amazing and its even false colour. Seeing a briefcase with nothing but a banana inside really made my day. - Martin Lewis ~ Yeah, if I had a donor card and my family stopped the use of my bits for science and humour, I'd haunt the bastards. - Andrew Cunningham ~ > There's a cute waitress/PhD student in my favourite cafe who keeps smiling at me though.. Do you smile back, though? (Hint: shouting "let me ravish you!" and jumping on her is a bad idea.) - Paul Walker ~ TP's 3rd Law: Any sufficiently advanced philosophical discourse is indistinguishable from bullshit. - TitanPoint ~ This is where I threaten to sing/cry, depending on what scares whom most. - Ritu Ko ~ > They just had some guy using Microsoft Flight Simulator fly into the World Trade Center and The Pentagon as part of a report about how easy it is to learn how to do such a thing. > Surreal. Modern day truism: Not matter how bad the disaster someone will blame Microsoft. - Sam Maughan ~ What's wrong with being drunk in bed? Being drunk on the floor of the garage, I can understand someone objecting to. But drunk in bed? - Brad DeLong ~ > Those who will not study history are condemned to repeat it. And those who do study it, tend to repeat each other. - Ketil Malde ~ The national weight problem is especially troubling for our young people, because as they have become fatter, their role models have become skinnier. Your modern pop stars -- your Britney Spears, your Christina Aguilera, your Britney Aguilera, your Christina Spears and your Back 'N' Street Sync Boys -- have the body fat of a Bic pen. These stars have to be in superb shape because their musical acts consist of sprinting frantically back and forth across the stage, as if pursued by invisible jackals, so as to distract attention from the fact that their music -- and I don't mean this as a criticism, just an observation -- bites. - Dave Barry ~ In space, no one can see your screen - John Best ~ Old chemists never die, they just reach equilibrium. Old programmers never die, they just lose their memory. There is no conclusive evidence as to what happens to old skeptics. - Unknown ~ If life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and throw it in the face of the person who gave you the lemons, until you get the oranges you asked for in the first place - Phil Hartman ~ Music can make a movie scary. A few piercing piano notes and you have Halloween's eerie/spooky/freaky theme. A deep base line back and forth and you become so afraid of the water, you hesitate to take a bath. - The Self-Made Critic ~ > Does anyone with a computer _really_ need to be told how to cut and paste? I guess so, which is sad... You'll be receiving an angry note from my father, as soon as he figures out how to e-mail someone. - Robert Hutchinson ~ Personally, I think it's a triffic idea, and would like to announce that any manufacturers of fine fountain pens who want to get plugged in the text of the next novel should just drop me a line. And a sample fountain pen or two. Also people selling small south sea islands -- I will happily plug your south sea island sales company in my next novel in exchange for a small island of my own. - Neil Gaiman, on product placements in books ~ The great mystery of this season is guessing just how bad the opposition are going to be, but Wycombe's cup exploits of last season give them an air of respectability that was only tarnished by the game starting. - Martin Sykes, Huddersfield Town supporter ~ Last I checked, England was still a nation. At least, the IRB and FIFA think so, and that's all that matters... - Charlie Bell ~ Charlie, how many times do I have to tell you, Total Recall was *not a documentary* - Rik Burke ~ > Can anyone suggest a good cure for gaming overdose? It seems our group needs to discover REAL lives, not just these made up ones we're living so often. > Deftmar Slipwind, king of rogues First of all you need to stop signing your name, "Deftmar Slipwind, king of rogues". - Deano ~ And if you really want to hide ASCII text, put it in a file called README. If my experience of users is at all representative, this security measure is 99.99% effective. - Richard Heathfield ~ No, Rich, all maps are lies, designed to perpetrate the profits of the airlines. Australia is actually wholly located on the Lancashire/Yorkshire boundary. Russia is in Edinburgh, and Scotland is currently being towed, by 3 large guys in a row-boat, across the Southern Ocean so that it can be joined with Japan at the South Pole. - Charlie Bell, geography wizard ~ Friend of mine tells the story how she was being interviewed for work in a lab. The interviewer asked her three times whether she had any objections to animal research. After the third "No, I have no objections to animal research", she explained that the last lab she worked at, she asked if she could take the "control" rabbits home with her after the experiment had been completed. They allowed her to do so, "And they were delicious..." - Jeff Suzuki ~ > So what _is_ a legitimate use of an anonymizer? stopping by on alt.sex and asking if your 11 cm is enough to be considered "well hung". - Matija ~ > Our pediatrician, bless him, won't do diddly over email, even though he knows it would be convenient. I tried doing diddly over email once, and wound up shorting out my own keyboard and my partner's monitor. Ouchies. - Captain Infinity ~ I think almost everything I've done since I was about 35 has been a disaster, hasn't it? - John Cleese ~ You'd almost think the people at Microsoft can't program, wouldn't you? - Richard Baker ~ Nope, I'm not a big fan of Lotus anything, to be honest. 1-2-3 and the word processor thing don't work very well, ccMail is fine as long as you don't want to send or receive mail, and Notes is a crippled database thing forced into service as a mail client. But apart from that... - Paul Walker ~ > Can we say "micromanaged b*tch"? No we can't, but only because I've never been able to pronounce asterisks. - David Thurston ~ > I can't agree more with that annoying MS Word paperclip that turns up if you don't have it turned off. I asked it last year whether or not we'd be relegated. It asked if I needed help setting the margins on my A4 paper. Useless thing. - Danny Gee ~ I do, however, have a iron statue of a rooster that was a wedding gift. There's pictures up on my father in law's website which show my wife and I standing there holding it. I was tempted to start a thread called, "COME SEE MY BIG HARD COCK!" and post a link to it. But I decided not to. - Padguy ~ As an aside, the day I was born apparently marked the nine month anniversary of the last time my mother had sex. Ever. Those zany Christian Fundamentalists. - Cameron Munro ~ Dates are desperate attempts to gain small bits of information from which a larger picture can be extrapolated. In the compressed dating schedule, there is not enough time to create a detailed portrait. Therefore every gleaned factoid tends to be given undue weight. If your date finds out four things about you, each of those four things becomes 25 percent of your perceived personality. Do you have a pile of old Spider-Man comics under the bed? Save this biographical tidbit for your one-year anniversary and it becomes a charming little background filigree in the rich and manly Portrait of You. But let it slip on the first date and bingo -- you're an inbred moron. - Steve Burgess ~ Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'. - Terry Pratchett ~ I love politics, it might be second in line behind supposition as the mother of all fuck ups. - Unknown ~ Ok, I knew I was properly ill when I found myself splayed out on the sofa last night, watching "It'll be alright on the night 13" presented by Dennis "Still Not Dead" Norden. Worse still, I actually found myself sniggering at a couple of the clips. This I put down to my weakened condition. - Rik Burke ~ Artificial intelligence is a fascinating subject, and computers are getting smarter every day, but no computer expert that I know of is worried about whether a database program could become the Antichrist. - Rich Buhler ~ Oh, orthodox chistians are like lesbians, they just need to be shown a bit a real luvin! - Steven Gross ~ I Love New York - Just Like London but without the class, history, style and general joie de vivre. - John Ingram ~ > In What Situations, If Any, Is It Permissible To Kill A Human Being? Excessive hogging of the tv remote - Claire Bickell ~ > My statement stands. I'm always amused when people use this expression, especially as part of a logical argument. It's so faux-righteous and pretentious and self-serving and generally jerk-like. "My statement stands! It stands on bright, shiny mountain, waving a gigantic American flag! My statement stands proudly, defeating the goddamn commie bastardness of *your* statement! My statement has more muscles, nicer teeth, and a bigger dick! MY STATEMENT RULES ALL!" Translation: "I'm...um...right and stuff. Yeah." - UFO Charlie ~ What is it about kind, sweet, caring, loving mothers that can change them into slavering fiends with no remorse when the "in law" is added? - Amanda Lowery ~ > This information was posted by Satan Satan? You mean THE Satan, as in the fucking DEVIL? Fuck, man, I'm not fucking around with HIM. He's bad fucking news. He'll kick your ass all the way to hell and back, if you'll pardon the expression. Look at how he fucked with St. John. HE EVEN TEMPTED FUCKING JESUS, you know, Jesus H. Christ? Fuck no, man, you deal with this one yourself. - Fatass ~ YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE / MY ONLY SUNSHINE / WHEN YOU DON'T SHINE / I CAN'T PHOTOSYNTHESIZE ENOUGH ENERGY / TO WRAP MY LEAVES AROUND MY PREY - Brett ~ Our first reaction upon hearing the full title of Star Wars Episode II was something like "Ow." But then Lucas explained to us through the magic of press releases that he was trying to hearken back to a simpler time of adventure serials and early science fiction films which were nearly all really, really bad. So that makes it okay! - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ I strenuously object to being associated with a polite and civilised affair. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ > Having kids is just an excuse to re-buy all your old favourite toys Yup, the day my daughter turned 3 months old, my brother went out and bought the entire Harry Potter series.., John got her a basket ball hoop... - Ritu Ko ~ I think, therefore I am. But not necessarily today. - Paul Walker ~ The Internet: May contain traces of nuts. - Unknown ~ > As opposed to Xena's paradox, which is, "How exactly can she fight in that leather outfit, and leave all of that flesh exposed, and survive?" She can't. Xena got killed at least five times in the course of the six-year run of the show. And this doesn't count (a) intentional temporary deaths as part of a ruse (twice), (b) deaths in an alternate timeline (twice or more), or (c) death-like trances to visit the Amazon land of the dead (I don't know the number). The coward dies a thousand deaths; the brave man dies but once; the Warrior Princess dies about once a season, to keep in practice. - Kevin Wald ~ Whilst logic tells me we are all descended from survivors, my eyes and ears keep telling me otherwise. - Michael Saunby ~ The purpose of language is to convey information. This only works if both sender and receiver of information both use the same system. In other words language only works precisely because it is standardized. The purpose of cryptography on the other hand is to make the message unintelligible except to one person. In other words cryptography only works precisely because it is NOT standardized. So what they do is to make most of the cipher standardized, and to concentrate the non-standardization into one part called the key. So far so good. But of course the key, the non-standardized part, must be nonstandard in only standardized ways. And also key management must conform to certain standards. In other words standards are being formulated whereby the nonstandard parts, which must conform to certain standards of non-standardization are also to be handled only in a standardized nonstandard way in order to standardize on the overall non-standardization. I hope this makes the position clear. - John Gordon ~ Moses thought he saw a bush, burning, but not consumed. Now, we know this probably meant he was on drugs or a little bit loony, but this is what he thought he saw. - Chad ~ > Get some rest, let us know how you're doing, and for god's sake GET A MAC. Well, the company is about to buy me a SHINY! NEW! LAPTOP! and I have successfully overcome their stupid requirements for "standards", so I'm accepting suggestions on what to get. If a Mac will open Visio files natively with NO INTEROPERABILITY PROBLEMS EVER EVER EVER, then I'll get me one a dem. Please avoid use of the word "emulation" in your answer, as a gory stabbing often offends the recipient. - David Pacheco ~ It makes you ponder the Big Questions, like "What the hell?" and "Why? Oh Sweet Baby Jesus, WHY?" Which would presumably be the same reaction of people were they to chance upon Sinfest in family newspapers. One can imagine the horror of hapless citizens in Buttville, America as they open their Sunday funnies to find angels getting shot. - Tatsuya Ishida, cartoonist, after another syndicate rejection ~ The names of the buildings are actually my favorite part. The lack of subtlety here is lovely. There's the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Great Harmony, the Hall of Middle Harmony (whatever that is), the Imperial Supremacy Hall, and the Mental Cultivation Hall, just to name a few. From the name, I half expect to see a group of stoners standing outside the Mental Cultivation Hall. - Joe Lavin, visiting the Forbidden City ~ > What about full neuro interfacing? You simply "think" commands/text entry, etc, and a computer implanted in your skull or externally interfaced via cable processes and executes those commands. That might be almost as good as vi. - Dorothy Heydt ~ Be sure to pre-book a plentiful supply of virgins and black cockerels; you DID know that these are an absolute must for getting SCSI to work the way you want, didn't you? - Brian Kelly ~ God was drunk and worked for Microsoft.... - The NIK ~ My favourite moment from being a guide leader was when one 14 year old with an evil sense of humour told a very fashion-conscious 12 year old girl that 'mindlessly following fashion trends is *so* 2000.' Fortunatly I managed to get out of the room before bursting out laughing. - Claire Bickell ~ > What do you think the British image of a philosopher is? SEE! Kenneth Branaugh, naked above the waist, well-oiled and sporting an improbable beard IN KARL MARX'S DAS KAPITAL co-starring Helena Bonham Carter as Engles and co-starring Robert DeNiro as the Capitalist System! - James Nicoll ~ > MY EYES! TAKE THE SHAMPOO OUT OF MY EYES! > IT BURNS! THE A-G-O-N-Y! HOW DO I SCRATCH MY EYEBALLS?!? > MY EYES! THE SHAMPOO BURNS MOMMY! Right. Cancel the "Herbal Essence with Lye" product line. - Carl Burke ~ My binge drinking friends stop by several times a week and get sloppy drunk along with my binge drinking wife. I'm the designated driver, designated mop up man, designated beer runner, and designated sane participant. Hell, I even became a bail bondsman, just for the convenience. - Randy D ~ the rules of marketing seem to be that: "shiny is good in all circumstances" "if it can be chrome or silver it must be chrome or silver" "moving things about will impress people, and the faster you move the things the more they will be impressed" "if something shiny, sliver and animated doesn't sell, blame the public" I sometimes wonder quite how many genes we share with the magpie - Eric Jarvis ~ >>> Let none of us forget the "Theme from Titanic" by Celine Dion. >> That is not possible. > It is for me. I never saw the flick and I don't listen to a radio station that plays it. It's on TV. It's sneaking into musical compilations. I saw it hiding behind a telephone pole on a street cornet. I once found it hiding under my bed. It's everywhere. It will find you. You have to sleep eventually. And the pods are waiting... - David S ~ Back in the days when I was working for the government, I thought about being caught in a honey trap and made up my mind that as I was being shown the pictures I'd say, "I want ten wallet sized of that one, two eight by tens of that one and can you blow that one up to poster size." Unfortunately, despite all my trying, no beautiful Soviet agent ever can my way. - John Warren ~ > I need some good links about ip spoffing . So, you need some good herking sites so you can become a crocker? - Unknown ~ > I'm just glad God got a lot nicer in the New Testament... Yeah, well, I guess it's true that having kids mellows you. - Fish Eye no Miko ~ > And on a more esoteric level, The sound of creation is "Ahh". Incorrect. That's just the sound of a good backrub. > For some reason, this is the universal sound of something being created... I think that's more like "splort", sometimes preceded with a kind of "pocketa, pocketa" noise. > you hear it during intercourse.... No, that's "ook oook ook". I fear that you may be doing it wrong. > you hear it during the pain of child birth.... I was there. That one is *definitely* "You bastard, how could you do this to me!" There was also a lot of grunting and some screaming, but no "ahh". It was about as far from "ahh" as you can get. - Unknown ~ > Some clodhopper down in Griffith, Indiana swallowed a yo-yo! Just the once? - Colin Rosenthal ~ > Politics aside, Bush's resting heart rate is 43 beats per minute?! > This is amazing for a man his age. Are you sure you didn't mix his resting heart rate with his IQ? - Wolf Jaeger ~ Finally, to round off the day's reading, I read an article in the Times 2 supplement about the hideously expensive camps that America's richest are sending their kids off to (they get taught how to make their own beds, share bathrooms and do without video games - okay, okay, they do other stuff as well, but still...). The idea is that with these kids' jam packed schedules (they are 12 years old, after all) they don't have the time to deal with insignificant little things such as basic life skills, e.g. cooking, cleaning, living without TV; thus, they require attendance at summer camps that cost four figures to give them these life skills. - Adrian Hon ~ People are stupid. Marketing experts know that if you call something by a different name, people will believe it's a different thing. That's how ``undertakers'' became ``funeral directors.'' That's how ``trailers'' became ``manufactured housing.'' That's how ``We're putting you on hold for the next decade'' became ``Your call is important to us.'' - Dave Barry ~ Being a born and bred American, I should feel obliged to come to a strong and patriotic defense of our native chocolates. Unfortunately, I've tasted them. - Kathy K ~ I used to cycle to work in London, the best description is a high adrenalin game of space invaders being played with one life left. - Mark Thackstone ~ So, things should be just about as clear as mud, that is my level of comprehension on this topic, and I was born in this community. - Ritu Ko, on the Indian caste system ~ Here's a good rule of thumb to follow: people hate blinking. It is extremely distracting, and should only be used to draw the user's attention to the most severe conditions, such as: "Your computer is on fire" - Isys Information Architects, on the evils of the tag ~ Actually, at the end of _Armageddon_, the girl behind me said "That was the *best* movie, EVERRRR!" and she meant it. Apparently she didn't see the same movie I did, or she had more drugs. - Amanda Lowery ~ >(1) Where is the whorehouse? It's in yer momma's house! >(2) My pants are full of keys. while interesting, those phrases are sort of off the beaten track from "now plug in your modem" and "what kind of idiot are you anyway? don't delete things from that directory unless we tell you to do that!" not that we actually say things like that to our analysts, of course... - Matt Rhodes ~ Speaking of my parents, my dad's just bought a flamethrower. No, I'm not kidding. - Claire Bickell ~ In general, we don't like art - but we know what we like, and it's pictures of spacecraft and exotic women-creatures on the front of sci-fi novels... - NTK ~ > It's a good tool for debugging networking problems. Although an axe is also useful on occasions... - Paul Walker ~ > Metadata Sounds Cooler Than Catalogue Record, But It Isn't Metadata *is* cooler than Catalogue Record. If you say "metadata" you are an information systems architecture design specialist. People with an M.S. in Information Management and Systems get paid $70,000 a year. If you say "catalogue record" you are a librarian. People with an M.S. in Library Science get paid $20,000 a year. - Brad DeLong ~ Hahahahahahaha, you use Outlook! - Steven Gross ~ If you cut me do I not cry like a girl, if you ignore me do I not get all depressed and stuff and have to eat ice cream until you call me again? - Steven Gross ~ >> Why is my PC acting up? > maybe it has family issues? Or maybe its something to do with the vast amount of pornography that seems to have been viewed on it whilst I've been away! I don't know, let a mate use your pc "to apply for an internet bank account", and this is what happens! I'm a bit dubious about sitting on this chair to be honest. - Rik Burke ~ It's not a storm, it's just raining sideways. Time for a beer? - Charlie Bell ~ We decide it would be funny if Survivor Productions accidentally left Kimmi out in the outback when the show is over. - Salon.com ~ I've always understood it to be that machine tools were more Babbage's excuse than the real reason. What I've read of the history of the Analytical Engine was that it was brought down by requirements creep -- which proves right there that it was the first real computing project. - Charles Martin ~ There Is A Certain Frightening Moment That Comes From Getting In A Car So Trashed That You Are Glad You're Not Driving, Then You Look At The Driver And Realize That He Has Done Just As Many Drugs Tonight As You Have - Matt Rhodes ~ Someone once told me to RTFM, so I bought a copy of the joy... oh never mind. - Bill Godfrey ~ > What are the fantasy cliches you love to hate? The dungeon filled with traps, which the villians and monsters apparently wander in and out through every day. The next time I write a dungeon, the first thing the heroes will see is the body of the Evil Sorcerer, who was spitted on his hidden spear trap while going out to get the paper in the morning. Of course, his Sceptre of Malign Power is back upstairs on the throne of skulls... - Jon Acheson ~ The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. - Terry Pratchett ~ What you have to remember is that in the movies there are two types of people 1) the directors, artists, actors and so on who have to do things and are often quite human and 2) the other lifeforms. Unfortunately you have to deal with the other lifeforms first. It is impossible to exaggerate their baleful stupidity. - Terry Pratchett ~ As a journalism professional, I am always interested in new ways to make things burst into flame. (All guys are. That's why we have a Defense Department.) So I decided to try to reproduce Doug Forand's experiment. Because of the potential danger that I would turn my house into a raging inferno, I took the safety precaution -- originally developed by scientists conducting nuclear tests -- of placing the beer outside. - Dave Barry ~ Sullen? Sullenness is a sin? The sort of sin that dooms you to spend eternity in a slime-pit? Now I'm worried. How about crankiness? Poutiness? Irascibility? My God, what if irony is a sin? Yeah, I'd certainly be overjoyed to find *that* out. - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ I have it on good authority that there are few things worse than hitting a wombat. This is from Mick the Truckie, whose exact phrasing was "those bastards are like fuckin' speed humps with fur." - Heath Graham ~ > We could tell you but then we would have to kill you. So TELL HIM already!!!! - Opus The Penguin ~ > Good grief, my boss was the dev manager for outlook! Can we have his address? I know some people who'd like to talk to him. - Paul Walker ~ I know many of you might have a low opinion of "techies". (Let me just point out here that the image you might have of system administrators staying up all night, surrounded by pizza boxes, old Coke cans, playing Quake is NOT right. That's developers you're thinking of.) But remember who it is who sorts out problems for you when you've done something unbelievably stupid and blamed it on "the server going down". Remember who it is who picks up the pieces when you've tried to install some dodgy software you've downloaded. Remember who helped you on your first day by showing you that you didn't actually have to touch the monitor screen with your mouse to get the cursor to move. (You know who you are, BBC employee, and I'm taking your name to the grave.) Above all, remember who helps you when you've forgotten your password. On second thoughts, just try remembering your password. So buy your system administrator a drink today. Because if you don't...well, just remember who's nearest the power switch." - Tim Varley, sysadmin for BBC online ~ No tool is inherently good or evil. Okay, except maybe for Frontpage. - Mike Sphar ~ Speaking of which, if anyone needs evidence that there is _no_ god, that whatever god was here has _left_ the planet, etc, take a look at the fantastic mess that people arrange for themselves in data formats and what they actually consider improvements! Clearly, this could not have taken place if anyone, I mean _anyone_, had had a grand plan. Even a god who were responsible for the platypus would have done better than XML. - Erik Naggum ~ It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it. - George W. Bush ~ But sometimes you just want warm grease with a pickle. - Terry Pratchett, why he eats McDonald's burgers ~ All generalisations are false. No, hang on... - Paul Walker ~ > I had a rabbit called Bunnikins, and a duck called Little Ducky > - Claire Bickell Why do you have this as a sig? I don't get it. - Claire Bickell ~ Gluttons can't eat or drink in Hell because they ate and drank so much in life. And they are trapped in putrid soil because they produced nothing but garbage in life. And they are being torn apart constantly by Cerberus's three sets of bloody teeth, because Dante is one sick motherfucker. - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ she’s usually quite harmless really, especially since they revoked her gun license after she tried to shoot the milkman. - Ritu Ko, discussing an interesting family member ~ And it's still in print, ten years on... On a signing, if I'm given one book to sign, it'll be the latest harcover; if there are two, the second will be the previous hardcover or latest paperback; if there are three, the third will be a copy of GO with dog-eared covers, yellowing pages that with the wavy look of paper that at some point been dropped in liquid, and the whole thing will be barely held together by sticky transparent tape, brown with age. And the owner will tell me it's their third copy, because the first two got loaned to friends who didn't return them. And the damn book didn't even get into the first four in the World Fantasy Awards that year, which just goes to show, although I don't what it shows." - Terry Pratchett, talking about _Good Omens_ ~ > what is the fundamental nature of programming? It's all about bossing computers around. Users have to say "please". Programmers get to say "do what I want NOW or the hard disk gets it". - Richard Heathfield ~ In passing, I've noted how difficult it is for some US companies who alleged deal internationally to handle the fact that there are Other Countries. - Terry Pratchett ~ I can see an opening for the Four Lusers Of The Apocalypse... "I didn't change anything", "My e-mail doesn't work", "I can't print" and "Is the network broken?". - Paul Mc Auley ~ Telecasters, while being great guitars, have been known to induce people to play Country and Western. On this basis alone they are not a good idea. - Mark Lamb ~ > What's the opposite of 'omniscient'? I don't know. - Tony Cooper ~ Not enough people for really high-quality carnage. The Obligatory Kid does not get eaten, much less gang-raped by a pack of raptors and forced to watch Oprah. Nothing new and exciting like watching a t-rex eat San Diego. Really, this one needed to be an r-rated horrorschlock with completely gratuitous T&A... Naked Chick opens the shower curtain to reveal... a raptor! Chompitty-slash-slash! - Jim Battista, reviewing _Jurassic Park 3_ ~ I'm typing this in a cyber cafe in Canterbury; just eight teenage boys making things blow up on their screens, and me. That's technology, that is. - Neil Gaiman ~ > First - What's the news, if any, on the movie for Good Omens? We understand Terry Gilliam has got a script he's happy with. And that's it, unless Neil has heard something I haven't. As I hope everybody knows, we're keeping out of this, except maybe we'll sneak around when it's being shot and steal some of the props. Neil would like the burning Bentley, I'd like Death's mototcycle. - Terry Pratchett ~ I know I shouldn't write so much. But when I've finished a book the choice is: find something else to do, or tidy your desk. And I don't know how to tidy my desk. - Terry Pratchett ~ >> Unfortunately for those of us who are both Jewish and Star Trek fans, that date coincides with the Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Most Jews, whatever their denomination, will be attending synagogue that evening and missing the premiere of "Enterprise." Major bummer, guys. {Jonathan} > Two words: Video Tape. You can videotape Kol Nidre? That jewish religion sounds really cool.... - Unknown ~ For the past 10 months, the question's been posed: "What should Michael Palin do for his next travelogue?" Dozens of people were nice enough to make suggestions, 95% of which had to do with Michael Palin going to their country. Well, their town. Alright, their house! Which would be okay, you know, because he's seen the absolute worst, most squalid conditions, and he'd be cool if you just forgot to pick your underwear up off the floor. Not like your mother... - Michael Palin Unofficial Web Page ~ "ok, so you rotate the blocks as they fall, so they fit, then what?" "you do it again" "then what?" "thats it. Ummmm it gets faster? and there's this neat little tune.." "scew that - I'm off to shoot someone online." - John Best, on tetris ~ > Well, that's not strictly true. We know quite a bit about various parts of how we percieve things, though we don't have all the parts, or how they fit together. But there are a number of models that offer quite a complete explanation of how we might perceive things. Yeah, just the other day I was discussing that with Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffa, Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, Helena Christiansen, Sophie Dahl and Eva Herzegova. We were thinking of putting a paper together about it, but work commitments being what they are... - Steven Gross ~ Man, you're so square. You need to get down and see where the kids are at, er, Man. I, despite my advancing years, am totally hip with the groovy sounds being performed by today's popular beat combos. Yeah Baby. - William Sheward ~ VB is very useful for allowing non programmers to prove they cant program. - Druck ~ But when I'm in Australia I drink beer, because if you are in Australia and you don't drink beer you are prosecuted. - Terry Pratchett ~ He had trouble with deadlines in the same way that the planet Jupiter is bigger than a duck - Neil Gaiman, describing Douglas Adams ~ If JavaScript is walking alone late at night through a bad part of town with a pocket full of $20 bills, ActiveX is dropping your trousers in the middle of the yard of a maximum-security prison, bending over, and yelling 'Come and get it, boys!' - Adam Thornton ~ Personally I 've been saying for years that July 4 should be a national holiday in the UK as well -we can celebrate getting both shot of our most troublesome and unfashionable colony *and*, more importantly, winning the war with France for supremecy in North America. (and, incidentally helping precipitate the French Revoultion by bankrupting our Gallic neighbours.) - Phil Dyson ~ > FUKCING LOSER That should be "FUKCING LOOSER". We should get the ISO to agree a standard for List Flames. - Richard Baker ~ Perhaps my problem is apathy, I see the shit, I see the fan, I see the shit hitting the fan, but do I give a shit? - Steven Gross ~ I don't know about you, but I sent off $5 on two months ago and now I have $256,000!! And owing to a typing error I also have a huge pianist!!! - Terry Pratchett, talking about spam e-mails ~ At about 11.00am this morning this thread was started by me looking for a way to get a lower ping time for when I was playing Unreal Tournament. In less than 10 hours its somehow metamorphasised into something about chrome butt plugs! That is pretty damn impressive. - Rik Burke ~ Do I blame the beer? No! Do I blame the odd cocktail of vodka, gin, archers, cranberry, orange and lemonade? Not really, ok maybe a bit. Do I blame the Zinfrandel? No, it was rather good. Do i blame the Canadian blended whiskey we had at the end of the night? Definately!!! Oh fuck do I feel like shit this morning. That isn't a question, the questioning has stopped already. Oy this typing makes such a noise. - Steven Gross ~ I'm proud to announce that within the requisite 5 minutes of finishing my exams, I had a pint within my hands. I am currently drunk. Thank you for listening. - Adrian Hon ~ Oooh. Now that I think of it, I'd *LOVE* to be on Battlebots. But not with a robot -- give me some armor around me old legs and a big fuckin' sledgehammer, and let me have at 'em! YAAAAH! Jim SMASH! Jim, who really does like busting things with sledgehammers, and has done so professionally. - Jim Battista ~ If God Had Intended Us To Revise, He Would've Made It Interesting - Dan Hon ~ I *hate* when people get all conciliatory and stop arguing just when I'm working up a good rage. - Amanda Lowery ~ Drinking is to the Irish what martial arts are to little monks who live in temples in forgotten Himalayan valleys... - Charlie Bell ~ When all you've got is a nailgun, every problem looks like a messiah... - Iain Chalmers ~ When I get my millions, I will be building a Moebius (sp?) shaped race track. This will sort the men out from the boyz. - John Ingram ~ Two weeks ago I joined a protest against my own Bank while still in uniform, that may have been a bad career move all things considered... - Andrew Cunningham ~ >> At this point I will tell everyone something I learnt in a lecture last week. Did you know that you can get amnesia from having sex? > The default smartass response to this is "I did know, but I forgot", right? What was the question again? - Rik Burke ~ I sometimes wonder why people bother patenting some of the stuff that comes across my desk. They could save the money and get drunk instead. - Steven Gross ~ I hate exams in the afternoon - I always spend the morning getting progressively more worried about them. And I hate exams in the morning, because I have to get out of bed and it's traumatic. - Jo Richardson ~ My brain had obviously secured a large special effects budget for this particular dream, because it was a *very* impressive scene. - Brendan Nelson ~ So what happens in a porno blooper - does the guy ejaculate *inside* somebody? - Jim Battista ~ All hail, weirdos! For without you my job would be boring! - Steven Gross ~ I have this annoying habit of being attracted to women you are imaginary or fictional or on telly or inaccessible or not single or dangerous or not interested in me or not interested in men or unlikely ever to be in the UK ever again or then there are the ones who's boyfriends are much bigger than me and their knuckles drag on the ground. Why do women go for knuckle draggers? It's penis size isn't it? maybe I should stop over analysing this? - Steven Gross ~ God: And here's the next species, one I'm particularly proud of... Adam: Beetle. God: Excellent. Now here's another... Adam: Beetle. God: No, you just named the last one "beetle". This one is quite different -- look at the pattern on the wing cases, and the shape of the antennae... Adam: Beetle. God: Well, OK, though they certainly look different to Me. Now, the next species is -- Adam: Beetle. -- Excerpt from "The *Real* Reason for the Fall" - Unknown ~ There are moments, these days, when I sit at my desk, watching the spam pour into my in box, and think, Well, we did it! We built the Internet and created the most efficient means in human history for delivering penis enlargement pitches and come-ons from Nigerian scam artists. - Scott Rosenberg ~ > If you ever met me karaoke is the last thing you would ever expect me to do. No, the last thing I'd expect you to do would be to scream "I'm a banana" and then peel yourself open, but karaoke is pretty close. - Charlie Bell ~ Has anybody, ever, in the history of the world, managed to wear a bow tie without looking a complete idiot? They look silly enough with dinner jackets, IMHO, but some people sport them on a day-to-day basis as an alternative to a genuine tie - why? As every sane person knows, the only good bow tie is a revolving bow tie. - Rik Burke ~ Like my father and his father before him, I am a geek. It's remarkable that my ancestors even managed to breed. - Steven Gross ~ > Does anyone know of a product that specifically generates C code from flowcharts? This is for Structured programming (not OO with UML). Up here in Canada we call that a programmer. They're quite easy to find and will survive quite nicely if fed any Cola and Pizza. - John Latala ~ watching drag queens who do chick better than you do when you are, yourself, a chick, is a bit distressing - Amanda Lowery ~ Or indeed, a credit card company, where one dodgy bit of (not my) code had the unpredictable side-effect of irretreviably writing off 30,000 peoples cards in one fail swoop. And then temporarily earn you the office nickname of "Captain Chaos" just because you'd been the person who had run said dodgy code... I am in no way referring to myself, of course, and the fact that I work for the IT dept of a credit card company is purely coincidental. - Rik Burke ~ While humans are very flexible creatures, we're born with a number of powerful instincts, which are found across all cultures. Chief amongst these are a dislike of snakes, a fear of falling, and a hatred of popup windows. - Steve Taylor ~ Bombs! Explosions! Square jaws! Blue eyes! Flags! Pathos! Crispy fried soldiers! Wily Japanese! Innocent Americans! True love! Cuties! African Americans vindicated! The horrors of war! Lovers separated! Lovers reunited! Friendship strained! Friendship conquers! Special effects! Special effects! Special effects! - Patrick Gliddon, his review of _Pearl Harbor_ ~ On the topic of sexual deviancy, I've just come to the realization that there are women out there who are willing to have sex with dogs but there are none that want to have sex with me. - Unknown ~ A NUDE Wonder Woman??? How could you POSSIBLY consider such a travesty? I certainly wouldn't watch such an explosion of filth, or even set my video to take repeated freeze-frame captures! - Unknown ~ I do think that the basic premise of the song is slightly flawed. In the unlikely event of my g'f coming home, finding (and watching) me "doing it with the girl next door" on the floor, in the shower, and her even catching me on camera, somehow I suspect my pleading "it wasn't me" would carry very, very little weight. - Rik Burke ~ Q: If, as part of your power, you could bestow a behavior or personality trait on the average American, what would it be? A: A sense of irony. What predates the ability to understand irony is a certain amount of wisdom, knowledge, awareness and intelligence. - Terry Gilliam, answering an interviewer's question ~ > Are you happy? Yes, but i'm also drunk, so this is probably not a reliable answer. - Jo Richardson ~ Takes deep breath... Paperbacks come out a year after the hardback. It is twelve months after the hardback that paperbacks come out. Not eleven months, nor thirteen months, but fully twelve shall be the number of months shall until the paperback comes out. Yeah, even though six months have passed, yet another six months shall pass until the paperback comes out. ...etc... - Terry Pratchett ~ A creationist walked into a bar and said "Let there be beer". The bartender didn't hear him, and there was no beer. - John Wilkins ~ People whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be treated with patience, because it's usually not their fault they were reduced to getting their education from school. - Terry Pratchett ~ According to the Bible (Exodus, v. 67, 'Thou shalt not read fantasy novels.'"... - Sylvan ~ > I have a theory that one of the reasons the British dominated the world for so long was the effects of the irrational coinage and currency. That's true. The soddin' great gunboats were just a cosmetic detail. - Terry Pratchett ~ Taking a poll on America Online about anything is about as reliable as some of the ancient techniques for determining whether someone was a witch. - Salon.com ~ Heather Graham is so fucking pretty that I would cut out my own heart with a pen-knife if she asked. I know I have fallen in "love" with many movie actresses, but those instances were different. They were love only in the sense that I wanted the women to take off their clothes and have sex with me. My feelings for Miss Graham are different and much more true. Miss Graham, I want you to know that I will stalk you to the ends of the earth. I am not obsessed, I am above that sort of behavior, but I am willing to devote my every waking moment to a plan to win your heart. You deserve the Royal Filthy treatment more than even Clare Forlani. If you want free gas it's yours. A lifetime supply for free just for coming to Arvada and living with me and Mrs. Filthy (we can work out the details later). Actually, I can't give you free gas for life, but at least until your beauty fades. If you are worried about whether we would have sex, rest assured, we will have lots and lots of sex all of the time until you are too tired to fix me an omelette. - The Filthy Critic ~ I'm a redhead for crying out loud, we don't wear red unless we have an overwhelming urge to make ourselves look like an exhumed corpse. - Claire Bickell ~ Yes, we really are a marvellous people; when it comes to not being nationalistic, we're clearly the best in the whole world. So God Save the Queen, Rule Britannia and vote Labour! - John O'Farrell ~ My Favorite Sin is in Spain at the moment, and they stopped at a restaurant the other day to get some lunch. The owner of the place said, after some discussion of the menu, "you speak English so well, it's hard to believe that you're American." The British couple at the next table were *highly* amused. - Gene ~ As far as I'm aware I'm not specifically banned anywhere in the USA, and am rather depressed about it. Surely some of you guys can do *something?* - Terry Pratchett ~ I'm out here on the terrace whilst inside my parents watch Crash, which seems to consist of nothing but loud sex scenes. I'm trying to find a way in that doesn't pass the telly. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ I've worked out a good way to deal with watching sex-sodden films with parent present; chain-smoking, and ceiling inspection. Although after my mother's ill-fated attempts to tell me just how good her new partner is in bed ("he's very exper-"... "I DON'T want to know!"), I don't think I should feel embarrassed any more. Although embarrassment is very good when your mother wants to tell you about the "techniques" her new lover picked up during the time he was a sailor. - Brendan Nelson ~ In my experience the best way to deal with computer problems is: i) Take computer ii) Take peripherals that will not work with computer iii) Throw peripherals and computer into furnace iv) Increase furnace temperature to Burning Man levels v) Pull out blob of metal and plastic, which is your computer and peripherals become as one vi) Somehow plug blob into power socket viii) Hey presto! Compatibility issues resolved! You'll notice I missed out step seven. This is because I am a Project Manager." - Brendan Nelson ~ > What is this 'paper' of which you speak? Imagine a really thin, bendy monitor. Its the ultimate plug and play as well - 100% guaruanteed to have no driver-issues, works irrespective of OS or geographical location, and is easily recycled. Plus, get this - it actually grows on trees! Sounds suspicously like that documentary about the pasta-farmers, I know, but my mate's mate's dad knows someone who made some once. And I read it on the internet. So it's a FACT! - Rik Burke ~ > I wonder what the offspring of Mrs Malaprop and the Rev. Spooner would be called. "The forty-third President of the United States" - R.H. Draney, on George W Bush ~ Where's a good crazy idiom when you need one? Normally they come raining down on me like cats and dogs. - Redfox ~ I would guess that well over half of the spam I get is either from people selling illegal medications -- some of which might give me an erection -- or selling online pictures which would kill it stone dead even if I had one. - Guy Kewney ~ _Armageddon_ got some astronomy right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do indeed exist. And then there was... um... well, you know... um. Okay, so that was about all they got right - Phil Plait ~ > Ok Folks. what would you like YOUR obituary to read?. > Mine would be 'He was nice to a toad once and then died.' [;)] I'd like mine to read... "OK, so he's not actually dead yet... but it's been 300 years and we're tired of waiting" BTW. my "famous last words" may probably be... "What's that beeping noise?" or... "Hmmm... tastes of almonds, yummy" or... "Anyone else smell that?" or... "Is that bone supposed to do that...?" or... "Yeah? You and who's army...?" or... "Trust Me, it's the blue wi....." or... "Aww what cute little fish..." or... "Yes that does make your bum look big, actually..." - Moley ~ > Hey Kids, want to volunteer on June 16, 2001? Sure! > On this day, these volunteer teams will repair playground equipment, help seniors, remove trash from streets and many more projects. > The possibilities are limited only by the imagination. I volunteer to build the world's biggest community bong -- it would require a few modifications on a water tower, and lots of hose from the fire department. Plus, we're going to need some acetylene torches (for fire, natch), something with a high heat tolerance for the bowl, and of course, a few pounds of herb. - Unknown ~ > Owwwy! Patrick you bad man! Your dildo just nearly forced my noodles out my nose! see? it's lines like that that make the culture list so entertaining and yet so difficult to explain to other people... - Matt Rhodes ~ > Is Windows 98 masculine or feminine? It's a three-year-old prone to throwing tantrums and messing itself. - Sheriliyn ~ > I have found the best way to get answers is to speak with a person who is very good at what he does. I've found a better way to get answers is to speak with a person who is very good at what you want to know. I'm sure you're very good at what you do, but I don't see how autoerotic asphyxiation is going to help anyone win their football league. - Unknown ~ I think I just broke two toes in my right foot. Moral: Don't attempt to reenact scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with a three year old. - Horace Wachope ~ Andy keeps buying ham sandwiches for lunch and waving them infront of me saying how I'm not allowed them. This is making it very hard for a young jewish person trying to deny his jewishness through general apathy and hatred of religion in general while still thinking it might be a good idea to start hunting for a jewish girlfriend. - Steven Gross ~ I'd like to go on record as saying that I have never been had by a squirrel. - Amanda Lowery ~ Award for bravery in the face of unusual danger: Jim, for trying one of Patrick's pickles. - Amanda Lowery ~ Darth Vader is the only villain in the movies with a cool face plate. - Roger Ebert ~ I like my alarm. I like my kill switches. I like my German Shepherd Dog. I like my device that keeps someone from pushing the brake pedal. I like my battery cut-out. I like my device that holds the brake pedal up by locking it to the steering wheel. I like my Smith. I like my Beretta. I like my Glock. I like my shotgun. For REALLY stubborn cases, I send my wife out. Go ahead. Touch her Jeep. - Steve Wolf ~ Thinking it over, I can't remember the last time I threatened to insert a hedgehog into someone. Well, last Tuesday, but that was a social thing and had a different tone to it. - Bob Tokyo ~ If I ever meet a vampire, I want it to be an anorexic one. The Vampyre Stops By by Anne O. Rexeia [A small, pale bat flutters weakly into the room. With a tiny, pitiful puff of bacon-flavored smoke, it morphs into a thin, pale woman with fangs.] Vampire: I love these cool evenings. Me: AAAAAAA! Vampire: There is nothing to fear. [she bares her fangs] Me: Nooooo! Vampire: I want to drink your blood! [pause] Actually, on second thought, I'll just have some water. Do you think this mirror makes me look fat? Me; Uh...." - Kevin Boyce ~ But being sexy and cool is not all it's cracked up to be, I can tell you. There are times when I just want to have a quiet pint in my local and talk about football or music etc but I never get the chance, being constantly hounded by scores of beautiful scantily clad women. Life's a bitch. - Bill Branton ~ > Does anybody know any good looking gay guys??? Nup, sorry sweetheart, can't help ya. I live in Sydney, and its gay friendly. More rampant totty for the rest of us!!! Hope my missus doesn't see this!!!! - Andy ~ Frozen spinach eurgh. Fresh and well cooked spinch I'm about 50/50 on. Just give me flesh. Cut off its head, and wipe its butt. - John Best ~ > America has 5% of the worlds population yet is responsible for 25% of it's pollution. Woohoo! We're number one! Go USA! - Gene ~ I didn't say it was "good", I said I liked it. There is a distinct difference. - Amanda Lowery ~ Though shalt only engage in flame wars when the RFCs are on thine side. - Dave Lugo ~ > What is dog's Hell like? It could be conveniently combined with the fleas' Heaven. - Brenda Clough ~ >> It's pretty legitimate, however, to say that the Roman Empire lasted until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans. > Remember, those footstools only LOOK harmless. Right, I should have said that Constantinople fell /over/ the Ottomans. In the dark. After a night at the pub. - Ian Munro ~ I doubt if you'll be able to download them anywhere, cos its illegal and stuff. But if you mail me, I can accidentally click on reply and, through a rather unique set of unfortunate events mail all the required files to you... - JS ~ Have you heard that NASA actually *wanted* to fake the moon landings? Unfortunately for them, they hired James Cameron to direct them, and he insisted on filming on location. - David Given ~ We had a fellow come in with his willy stuck in a 2 liter pop bottle [brand now forgotten]. I fear that some of the staff may not quite have kept an air of professionalism during the removal. - James Nicoll ~ We have a two cats, "Chairman Meow" and "Sir Lick a Lot". Sir Lick a Lot is the smarter of the two. I've been teaching him to play chess. Actually, he's not all THAT smart, as I can still beat him two games out of three. :-))) Chairman Meow on the other hand, is NOT mensa material. You would think that a cat living around here would know about things like aerodynamics. Apparently not! Our bird feeder is aprox. 10 feet off the end of the back deck on a 4x4 post about even with the deck height of 8 feet. Yesterday, the Chairman was seen on the deck assiduously studying flight dynamics as he envisioned them applying to cats and bird feeders. We watched him sit there quietly as he no doubt worked out the physics and mentally constructed the wanted trajectory against his aerodynamic profile. I of course being the more "experienced" member of the family already knew that the Chairman's flight envelope bore a close resemblance to a brick. My lovely wife of 35 years however, was actually showing some signs of concern. "Can he make it?" she said! "Well", I said, looking at our over fed; over weight fur creature, "perhaps with a ladder, or if he has eaten those baked beans I left for him in his dish." As I spoke, my wife let out a scream as it became instantly apparent that the Chairman had done the math. He twitched his tail and made his takeoff run. Unfortunately, his math was either very bad, or he had used the wrong base. He reached Cso [cat stall/paws and tail extended] and rotated at Cr [idiot cat liftoff speed]. All four paws came out as he serenely soared over the top rail. Somewhere between Vx and Vy he came to a complete understanding with Isaac Newton. Actually, Bernoulli was never even a factor. He came to an absolute stop in mid air for just an instant; I could swear that he looked back at me with a sort of stupid smile on his face. Then down he went, right into the rose hedge. The problem with the Chairman is that he never actually learns anything. If he could shave, it wouldn't be with Ocam's Razor. In his mind I'm sure he feels that the gravity was especially bad yesterday. He will no doubt re-study the problem and try again." - Dudley Henriques ~ > Okay, hands up -- how many of you have successfully hijacked an airplane with a 1-inch Swiss Army blade? Well, there was that time I was in the SEALs, and we took over a cargo jet of Arab terrorists with half a McDonald's milkshake and naked pictures of Whoopi Goldberg. But that's really not appropriate here. - Patrick Geahan ~ I Feel So Alone...I'm Frightened...It's Dark In Here...Oh Wait, I Had The Blinds Closed, Never Mind - Amanda Lowery ~ I want to have a 2-line bumper sticker made with the following on it: In larger type: MY OTHER CAR IS A CAN OF PEAS In smaller print: Think about it.... It's a nonsense phrase I thought up along with a few others. The second line is just there to really mess with people's heads." - Dan Harmon ~ > "Banging the neighbour on the hood of the car" could be sexual, or it could be Hulk SMASH!... Or both! Wheeeeee! Hulk GIVE YOU SWEET LOVIN'! - Jim Battista ~ > Bloody awful night - I seem to recall seeing Dave Hey there. This is not uncommon, seeing me has often resulted in people having a bloody awful night. - Dave Hey ~ If you eat an undead person, does that count as cannibalism? - Jim Battista ~ Useful Latin phrases for today II: Hi. I'm here to pick up the Pope's Superbowl tickets - Ave. Hic adsum ad tesseras pontificis maximi Colosseo Maximo tollendas - Unknown ~ President Bush says our schools need to do a better job of teaching mathematics, and I agree with him 150 percent. - Dave Barry ~ Thou Shalt Not Overtake The Son Of God - Chris Platts ~ > The mad scientist Doctor Van Doom has just invented the killfile bomb. If his demands are not met (he wants to post a nude binary of Britney Spears to sci.physics.research) then he will explode his device, instantly killfiling all intelligent life on Earth. And sadly, this only elminated 15% of usenet traffic. - Unknown ~ > Can anyone please tell me the difference between frosting and streaking? Frosting, as a verb, is the act of applying a sugary coating to a cake or similar food item. Streaking is running naked across a football field or other public place. A subtle difference. - Unknown ~ I heard about someone who reccomended Homers' _Oddysey_, saying "You'll love it, it's just like _Star Trek: Voyager_!" - Derek Bell ~ Jesus spoke with an American accent. Any number of movies have verified this. - Charles Riggs ~ Usenet convention requires at least one typo in spelling flames. - Unknown ~ You killfiled my father. Prepare to be plonked. - Unknown ~ Beer. Take pure spring water. The finest grains. The richest ingredients. And then run them through a horse. - Mark Atwood ~ Idea. Replace Most-Wanted posters with *ta-daaaaaah* Most Wanted Pasta. Pasta shaped like the most wanted criminals -- if you're at Il Ristorante and you see someone who looks like your tortellini, call the cops! AND you could have a line of pasta shaped like famous criminals. "How was the dahmeroni, sir?" "What sauce would you like with your caponelli, ma'am?" Collect them all! Eat the wicked!" - Jim Battista ~ Outlook Express can do Bad Things in the hands of an idiot. Actually, it doesn't matter whose hands it's in, it can still do Bad Things. - Chris Platts ~ Lesson learned the hard way: do not play go with cheap Chinese stones, the black kind of which look just like dark chocolate-covered coffee beans, while eating dark chocolate-covered coffee beans. - Paul Guertin ~ What would happen when a squad of stormtroopers met up with an away team made up entirely of Star Trek Red shirts? I mean the stormtroops couldn't hit the broadside of a barn w/ a bullet. The red shirts die at the slightest scratch.... - John Michael Davis ~ I still think, after the recent excesses of "The Patriot" and "U-571", that a bunch of governments get together to fund a big-budget, loud, effects laden extravaganza about how a team of British, Canadian and French misfits worked together to save the United States from being defeated by the terribly strong Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 20th Century. - Keith Morrison ~ >> I'd be curious to see what non-CGI stuff you do with Perl. > I use it to impress women. I use it to make the folks who write my paycheck think I'm a genius. Please don't set them straight. - Brad Baxter ~ What is the rock-bottom price I can get a piece of ass for? In all honesty - I'm tired of playing the three-date "Kiss my spoiled American female ass and maybe I'll fuck you" game. Aren't streetwalkers cheaper than "escorts", but risk of arrest higher? I know you are supposed to be able to get a better deal with drug addicts. But where can you find them? I'm kind of new to this because I'm not a scumbag. - Bluevelv ~ > What does "Qzyzzalroum" mean in English usage? > Does it have something to do with the Kinaiheverhead School? It means you should start the crossword over. - Mark Wallace ~ > Aren't you, at this point, cutting down a California Redwood using a banana *and* a particle accelerator? I believe I can honestly say I never expected anyone would ever ask me that question when I was growing up. - Gwyn Judd ~ >> All extremists should be shot, > I thought it was "all people who make generalizations should be shot?" "All people who aren't absolutly certain should be shot." I think. *boom* - Unknown ~ And as for you, Mr. Blackwell: How can anyone take your Worst-Dressed List seriously when I'm not on it? - Roger Ebert ~ 5 a0 be5ng ser564s here, 0y 2eyb6ard 5s f4c2ed - John Ingram ~ >>> Look at this way - half the programmers in the world are below average! >> Not necessarily. Maybe all programmers are above average except for one guy who *really* sucks. > Of course. That's the one whose code you're stuck with maintaining. He gets about a bit. - Terrance Boyes ~ I apparently have a special cellular plan wherein all my calls are routed through a Burger King drive-thru intercom in Bolivia. - Dave Barry ~ Is there anyone who hasn't, after a trip on French motorways, felt tempted to start shooting? - William Sheward ~ Always amuses me what is written on my Win98 disc "Do not make illegal copies of this disc", like I'm going to make a legal one? - Steven Gross ~ Hunmidity? Is that some sort of off-colour comment about sweaty Germans? - Amanda Lowery ~ So you get invited to an evening for new and prospective members of the synagogue and once you arrive and find out that you were lied to and there isn't a queue of yound beautiful single girlies waiting for you to whisk them off their feet, you fall back on plan B. Plan B being to make sure you tell every gossipy woman there how single and desperate you are without actually saying how desperate you really are. Throwing in such high eligibilty quotient stuff such as degrees, doctorates (almost), nice flats in the bay area, solid job, own car, flattering statments re: dress size of Renee Zellwigger (apparently she had to put on weight just to fit into a size 12 for the film. Perfect reply being "ah, but that's an American size 12". Well, after saying these things enough like a stuck record, I think it payed off. I think someone is trying to get rid of a daughter and she might be pushed my way, but going by the parents... I mean that shirt with those pants? - Steven Gross ~ Searches turn up hundreds of sites having nothing to do with the subject. And a remarkable amount of bandwidth is devoted to undergraduates telling each other they suck. Then there is the tendency to start with a destination in mind, and end up an hour later and dozens of URLs away. (I once went online to research Charles II, and concluded my search with a full-screen picture of a librarian who had the alphabet tattooed on her back in Garamond Italic.) - Roger Ebert ~ Ah. Usenet Feature #1,254: For anything that you can say with humorous intent, no matter how bizarre or outlandish, there's going to be *someone* out there online who'd say it in all seriousness. As a result, people who don't know you and don't see a smiley aren't going to be able tell, just by looking at your statement, whether you meant it seriously or as a joke. Wacky misunderstandings -- and, in fact, sometimes entire episodes of "Three's Company" -- can ensue. - William Starr ~ Alright, Guinness fans, do you eventually get used to that...flavor? I'm new to this whole beer thing, but every one I've had has made me want to rip my tongue out to stop the taste. - David Thurston ~ Anyway, this is why I like Coke. Coca-Cola sits there in a nice red can, and says, "You remember me, don't you? Remember all the times we shared? I still love you, you know. I am timeless. I am America. Drink me. Kennedy did. Ike did. Elvis did. Come home. Come home to Coke." Pepsi stands on the corner and says, "20 bucks. Take it or leave it." - Robert Fontenot ~ > Can everyone give me a honest and to the point description of what they think "internet access" is ? At it's most basic level, I'd define it as access to the internet. - Paul Raj Khangure ~ > Even if I end up not putting up a website, I'd still like the domain so I can have an email address that I can take with me from ISP to ISP. So, unfortunately, it can't be as stoopid as I'd like. This thing may well end up on CVs and other worthless documents.... So registering "lurvegod.com" is out? - Paul Walker ~ Some men are born desperate, some men gain desperation other men have a sense of desperation thrust upon them. - Steven Gross ~ Prison pallor - another fringe benefit of working with computers... right up there with screwed eyesight, a knackered back and an office almost entirely devoid of female conversation. - Rik Burke ~ >> Not That I Post Very Often After Taking A Bong Hit Or Anything > Of course you don't. perish the ... oh, look at the pretty lights... - Matt Rhodes ~ The First Rule Of Pornography: Anyone Left Alone In A Room Will Immediately Begin Masturbating - Jim Battista ~ April fools jokes work much better on 27th March. - Danny ~ I let her go and organise the wedding and what do we get? Dead sheep, androids, naked motorcyclists... - Adrian Hon ~ > Perhaps you think this is sick (it makes us giggle anyway) but I'm going to be made into jewelery when I die. Cremation, mixed with amber and whatnots, then a matching pendant and choker set. Mrs B will have me next to her always (no vomitting, please) and its a great thing to leave for the grandkids. > "Its beautiful Granma, what is it?" > "Its your grandfather dear. *cackle*" That's a great idea. And just imagine the conversation if it got stolen: "A pendant and choker set, officer, of great sentimental value" "It was your grandmother's?" "It was my grandfather" - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ Ah, the legendary wit of the Irish. And we're supposed to be a friendly race. I noticed that my least favourite chant of all time was going on: "You'll never beat the Irish". The complete disregard to national history, both political and sporting, that this chant shows is truly staggering. - Fionna O'Sullivan, Irish ~ You would not beliebe how much p[roofreading the above relatively sober sentence took to correct. I am evidewntly more pissed than I think, and control and shoift are really confusing me. Whats that copmputer game where you shoot bubbles ast other bubble and they explode. Whatever. Far too addivitive anyway., - Marcus Flavin ~ Can coffee be drunk in a sexual way while thinking about physics? - Steven Gross ~ I can't help it if you're the palest shadows of people next to my brilliance and wit. - Richard Baker ~ I hang up. I don't think he'll be ringing back. I drop the receiver and remember that receiver is an "i before e except after c" word and skip back a sentence and correct it. I don't think anyone noticed. - Simon Travaglia ~ > Proper Research Starts Tomorrow Ah, the motto of my PhD! - Richard Baker ~ I'm choosing to believe that the one entitled "John" is about me, and is a discussion about how fantastically great I am, possibly involving my potency, and desirability, and lamenting the physical distance between yourselves and mine, resulting in anguish at your inability to revel in my being. - John Best ~ I used to have a terrible fear of dying before I'd completed my mission on earth. Now I think I have a terrible fear of dying before I DISCOVER it. Still looking. - Simon Travaglia ~ The problem I have with making an intelligent statement is that some people then think that it's not an isolated occurrance. - Simon Travaglia ~ When you love something and set it free and it DOESN'T come back - well that's a real test of character... - Simon Travaglia ~ The problem with people whose minds are in the gutter is that they keep blocking my periscope. - Peter Gutmann ~ My father always told me I wasn't a total loss. I could always serve as a bad example. - Richard Rogers ~ ...a copy of Dianetics should be a part of every SF collection. Can't wait to start reading it, actually, should be a laugh. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ I keep trying to make some formal arrangement to donate my body to science, or the pet food industry, or anything. After I've finished with it, that is. - Camilla Roskelley ~ Fuck, it's getting crowded here on the moral high-ground. - Lars Henriksen ~ > Some game designers need to have sex more. I think they'd agree. However, that is a luxury notoriously difficult to find in the computer games industry. - Kim Randell ~ A sense off rhythm and some basic talent might help but isn't really necessary. Just look at Aqua. - Phil Dyson ~ Jim, who would donate his body to science if they promised to shoot it at an aircraft canopy/windscreen at 300 mph, or maybe even just into an engine. - Jim Battista, signing off an e-mail on cadaver crash testing ~ > My grandma donated her body to science. We got her ashes back after a year or so. They used her for cricket stumps? Australians.... Pah! - Charlie Bell ~ However this reminds me of the phonecall I had with my insurance agent last friday trying to sell me life insurance. Telling me about the restrictions, I am not allowed to go to war, my reaction "oh well" and I can't commit suicide for the first 12 months, my reaction "awwww, no fair" her reaction five minutes giggling. I've still got it! - Steven Gross ~ >> "A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes." > Don't know. Last night she only lasted for 25:-) - Steven Gross ~ 'Mothers Of the Taliban.' Sounds like a particularly offensive rap/metal band from LA. Or a terrorist group high up on the CIA threat list. - Phil Dyson ~ This is somethign that amuses me sometimes. That despite our cultural differences the mothers of irish catholic, jewish and indian origin are basically the same. These observations are based on my own mother, the stereotyping of Goodness Gracious me and some people I know who are irish and have mothers. - Steven Gross ~ All Niven aliens are Californians, just with wrinkly noses or extra limbs or whatnot. - Jim Battista ~ Basically, I went with a load of preconceptions, and was gutted to find that most of them weren't true. Not once did I see a pickup driving by with a load of hollering rednecks shooting at road signs whilst throwing crushed coors cans into the passenger footwell. Nor did I see a load of people dancing in the spray of an uncapped fire hydrant to relieve the searing heat whilst a cool black guy played double dutch on its base. On the plus side, I did hear somebody say "Whoah, these dudes know how to party", so it wasn't all a disappointment... - Rik Burke, on his trip to the USA ~ True, but however wrong they are are they not entitled to freedom of expression? Or does freedom of expression only apply to clever people like us? - Steven Gross ~ There is nothing wrong with Aqua, a pop band of seminal importance near equal to Abba's. - Marcus Flavin ~ You know it's going to be a good tute when you read the paper written by the lecturer in the assigned reading and can read whole paragraphs without finding a sentence that you understand. - Claire Bickell ~ To further the fine art of creative swearing there is no better teacher than to buy a computer and do the following things frequently: 1) Install new hardware peripherals. 2) Install new software. 3) Always purchase and install the newest, first version, of the latest operating system. He will soon be able to make a marine drill sergeant blush and women faint at 40 paces. They don't call it a "cursor" for nothing. - Falcon ~ In the meantime I'm going to adopt the traditional British approach to a confusing political question, I'm off down the pub :-) - William Sheward ~ > I think the general conclusion is still that it's a bad word, however. :) A truly terrible word. And not even terrible in a good way, like Jimbologisms. - Richard Baker ~ Fun things to find in the post when you get home do *not* include a letter from the letting agents, saying "your landlord wants to sell the house, please be out by 8th May". - Paul Walker ~ >> Foolish earthling! > Stop saying that! No, foolish earthling! - Steven Gross ~ Look, I'm about to buy me a double barreled sawed off shotgun and show Linus what I think about backspace and delete not working. - Unknown ~ See, this has all English words in it and punctuation, so I know its a paragraph, but I haven't the faintest idea what you just said. - David Brennan ~ If i did call her nice I meant it in the sense of "she is not one of the baby eating hordes from across the sea". - Steven Gross ~ I like baby carrots as much as the next person, even though I'm still bitter over finding out that I'm not literally committing vegetable infanticide - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg ~ Buttons? Pah, thats why the Venusians invented velco, isn't it Mr Sparkles? - John Best ~ Why am I never stranded on a dessert island? - Richard Baker ~ OK, the only reason I'm not smiting you is because I'm really tired and have to study for a test tomorrow. - Claire Bickell ~ Aha. You learn something every day. Except maybe tomorrow, since that's work training day. - Paul Walker ~ Dude...check it out...I'm the Galactic Overload, man... - Amanda Lowery ~ University ... alcohol... prohibited ... no, I just can't see those fitting together. - Paul Walker ~ Female? Check Human? Errr, check? Pulse? check? We got a match! - Steven Gross, on his criteria for selecting women to date ~ I am not a loony. I am a visionary. - Richard Baker ~ Currently, I'm toying with the idea of genetically engineered three-toed sloths, twice normal size. I haven't worked out why, or a way to make money off them, but I'm sure that'll come. - Paul Walker ~ I've started to carry on looking for things after I have found them to disprove the saying that "it's always in the last place you look". - Steven Gross ~ Americans nowadays have the attention span of... of... OOH!!! LOOK!! SOMETHING SHINY!!! Gotta go! - Unknown ~ > There's a word for the philosophy that life is not a natural phenomenon; but is, rather, due to a "life force" that isn't governed by the laws of nature as they can be observed and understood. > What is that word? Bullshit. Is there a prize? - Robert Lieblich ~ >> Ummm...are you referring to the now universally infamous and truly frightening http://goatse.cx site, perchance? > GAAAAAAAH! My EYES! My wounded EYES! JESUS! my eyes are the about the last thing on earth I'm worried about after seeing that. - Rik Burke ~ Hell, forget about the standards, who uses them in the real world anyway? Just knock it together with sellotape. - John Best ~ Revenge is a dish best served poached with a tarragon bechamel sauce, seasonal vegetables and new potatoes - John Best ~ I still can't get away from the comparison that calling your first book "A heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" is a bit like Oasis opening their first album with "Rock 'n' Roll Star" though. - Rik Burke ~ My perception was/is that while the rest of the computer world was striving for Fault Tolerant Software, Micro$oft was working on Fault Tolerant Users. - Unknown ~ However, over my desk, I keep a framed rejection letter from the Rolling Stone back when they were in San Francisco. I suspect it may have been written on one of those day-after-press-day gatherings by Dr. Thompson. It begins "You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate s***," goes through some less encouraging prose and then says, "Jam this morbid drivel up your a** where your readership will better appreciate it." And it concludes "Keep up the good work. Have a nice day." - M.E. Peterson ~ > Two words: sliced scrotum Um, hi, on behalf of men everywhere, I would like to hereby emote our commiseration for his plight, and ask that in the future, you never put those two words together again in print. - Unknown ~ Zeppelin is like a slightly mouldy mocha torte, if you eat one slice, and it's from the good part of the cake, where things like "The Ocean" are, it's delicious, but if you have too much, or you have the wrong slice, it'll make you barf. - Amanda Lowery, on the music of Led Zeppelin ~ If a computer were, say, a house, system administration would be called maintenance, and would include cleaning, fixing broken windows, and other such things. System administration is not called maintenance, because that would be too simple. - Lars Wirzenius ~ Geeks are the second best paid people in the world, the first to be blamed for technical problems, and the only reason why civilization doesn't crumble around your ears! - Illiad ~ OK, so I'm a fairly sad example of a modern human being at the moment. I think I have to describe myself that way because I'm watching and enjoying the Westminster Kennel Club dog show on TV right now. I just thought I'd share that. - James DiBenedetto ~ This is what happens when you try to use acroynms without the proper skills and training. - Claire Bickell ~ It was all Jesus' fault, man. He came back from the dead looking like a million bucks. And nobody was freaked out by it. Nobody started screaming "Aaaaah, it's Zombie Jesus back from the grave!" Hmmm...that'd be a good idea for a movie. Maybe those "Scream" idiots could write it. Jesus is back, and he's PISSED! "Arrrrrr! Jesus want eat brains!" - Ed Whitmore ~ Note to self, do not go shopping on a saturday morning in the centre of cardiff when there is a six nations match on. - Steven Gross ~ A special act must be passed laying down that any strike which inconveniences Marcus Flavin as much as this morning's tube shutdown shall be not only a criminal offence but one for which capital puninshment must be reintroduced. By garrotting with piano wire. - Marcus Flavin ~ Actually, after long thought, I'm not sure that America is the stupidest country on Earth - it's just that they promote their stupidity so effectively. - Mil Millington ~ Bits of life are wonderful. The part where I accidentally set fire to my keyboard this morning was not wonderful. - Claire Bickell ~ Allocentic? I think its something to do wih an Allosaur, big carnivorous Jurassic beastie, similar in design to your T Rex, and about as tall as a man. So here Claire is saying: "I am buying a palmtop so that I can track prey and my red meat intake. If only my tiny forearms would allow me to manipulate the stylus!" - John Best, in response to Claire Bickell's use of the word "allocentric" ~ > Presently searching for books on "how not to be an arsehole online" Here, borrow my copy, as you can see it's hardly been used! - Steven Gross ~ That's all well and good, but me, I still like the infrasonic guns people had been working on. The big low-frequency sound waves wibble your guts and give you "discomfort," by which I assume they mean The Shits. It would be fun to have one of those mounted to the car... - Jim Battista ~ Why does Chmoding sound like a nice warming Yiddish culinary creation. "Oy vey you poor thing have some more Chmoding and wash it down with a little bread". Or just a Yiddish phrase in general "oy, you are such a chmoding going out dressed like that, what would your father think?" - Steven Gross ~ A guy playing bagpipes really loudly just walked past my house. This seems unusual. - Richard Baker ~ Now, I agree that there are some operational difficulties inherent in this kind of writing. The complete breakdown of syntax and rationality, for example. In point of fact, I believe that the theory is far superior to the execution. - Matt Rhodes ~ > A good god fearing Texas MAN is the leader of the western world. Nah dude, he's just president of the US. - David Brennan ~ God's probably a Marilyn Manson fan, just to suprise any newly-dead members of the Christian Right. - Chris Platts ~ wait 'til we all have broadband. i'll attach home movies to my sig file just for laffs. - The Endless ~ > What next? A badger named after Britney Spears??? Why insult you badgers so? Me, I want to have one of those giant-scrotumed Japanese things named for me. Giantesticus jimbonius. - Jim Battista ~ Yesterday Deng the Curry-Guy mentioned that today would be the first day of Year of the Snake. So I asked, "Is that good?" And he replied, "I don't know! It's all crap! Even in Vietnam I don't believe it!" I think there's some cultural tension at work there. - Gryffyd Dempsey ~ i humbly offer myself as a test subject. I understand that it would be a great sacrifice to have to drink vast quantities of beer and attempt to get off with a member of the opposite sex but for the sake of science I'll do it. - Phil Dyson ~ I wormed my cat the other day. That's always a great opportunity to see cool stuff. - Charlie Bell ~ My ISP wears a big girls blouse. - Roxanne Dunning ~ > What percentage of the list needs vision correction? (And I remember this topic being done before.) I don't need it, I could stop whenever I want. Just that I'd fall down stairs and get on the wrong bus and stuff. - Andrew Cunningham ~ No Mr Bund, i expect you to diet! (extract taken from "You only live well if you excercise regularly and eat a good breakfast") - John Best ~ I fitted a snail with a death ray earlier. I'm going to train it to hunt glaciers. - Charlie Bell ~ There is a Turkish kebab house about 50 yards away from my flat; I've only ever been there once and I was so drunk that I forgot how to grip and ended up dropping my burger in the middle of the road. I was immensly pissed off at the time but, looking back, I think I probably saved my own life that night. - Matt Potter ~ Anytime you can express your age in signifcant fractions of a century, its a bit of a downer. - David Brennan ~ Miss World is sexist, patronising, degrading to women, old fashioned, out of place in a modern feminist society and Miss Italy should have won cos she was better looking. - Steven Gross ~ You know, that's what I love about Amanda, the way she can follow up one legs-crossing, eye-watering story with another that's even worse. - Duncan Foster, talking about Amanda Lowery ~ N recursive algorithms on the wall, N recursive algorithms, You take one down, pass it around. N-1 recursive algorithms on the wall. - Joe Moore ~ Have you seen _Space Truckers_? One of the strokes of genius in the script is a failure of the environmental control systems that makes the ship overheat and forces the younger, more attractive members of the cast to wander around in their underwear for half the film. It has good particle-beam-headed killer robots too. - Richard Baker ~ I heard that the Japanese are shipping huge loads of condoms to Florida, since they heard people there have problems with their elections. - Lord Flashbart ~ I want electric motors (and regenerating braking) with a turbine to charge it. Because that would sound all cool, and I'd be able to shout "TURBINES TO SPEED!" as I drove along. - Jim Battista ~ Is this the point when I put on my Genie Pants and start singing and dancing "Can't Touch This?" - Jim Battista ~ WARNING: consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns on the forehead. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ Barring such an eventuality I'll just emigrate to Canadia, crossing the border with my plaid suitcases and forehead maple leaf tattoo. Upon reaching the blessed land of liberty I'll shout: "Allo, vous, mes Frenchie friends! Allons-nous a jouer du Ice Hockey! Eh! Alors! Ou perhaps le curling! Mon nom est Jacques et je suis Canadien. My soeur married a moose." - Gryffyd Dempsey ~ >...IQ tests, which are after all only aptitude tests for various types of task and not a true measure of "intelligence" as many people seem to regard them as (or at least take them too seriously as). Except for the ones where I do extra-good. *Those* are accurate! - Jim Battista ~ For the record, when I called you lot a "wretched hive of scum and villainy," I meant it in the nicest possible way. - Jim Battista ~ I once left a tooth in a bottle of Coke for a whole damn summer and it didn't do diddly-squat. I felt ripped-off. - Jim Battista ~ I'd never be elected. I have a checkered past. For that matter, I have a checkered present. And also a checkered future, which I look forward to with great delight and anticipation." - Afterburner ~ I am a mystery wrapped in an enigma and smothered with secret sauce - Amanda Lowery ~ There there little camper, once you've learned to handle your desperation and have actually become *happy* with being single, a lovely wee lassie will show up and wreck it all for you. *ahem* I'M HAPPY NOW! WHERE'S THE STUD MUFFIN WHO'S SUPPOSED TO WRECK IT ALL FOR ME THEN!??! - Amanda Lowery ~ Is that a path you really want to go down? My revenge would be unspeakable. - Claire Bickell ~ My financial problem is very simple - I don't have any money - Phil Dyson ~ >> Do I RC that each member/participating country gets to run off its own Euro coins and bills, at least as far as the pretty stuff goes? So that the UK can still put Lizzie on things while the Germans do cool stuff like Gauss and the normal distribution? > Not exactly. The bills are the same everywhere, but the one side of the coins are for each nation to do their best with. Okay then. Close enough. So you can put "KRONERS RULE!" on it or whatever. That oughta make you feel better. - Jim Battista ~ I can imagine being emotionally attracted to a dude -- after all, I'm a dude, and who could resist anyone as lovable as YT? -- but the idea of wanting to play with a man's danglies... ugh. Why ruin a perfectly good bed partner by attaching a squid to her pelvis? - Jim Battista ~ > Also, think about a crowded office where everyone is trying to use voice control. SELECT ALL! DELETE! EXIT! - Paul Walker ~ >Well, if it's "Labor Day" then why aren't you Americans at work? Some of us are. Some of us have to give two 1 1/2 hour lectures tomorrow, and some of us aren't prepared. Some of us took a week-long vacation in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in the week just before classes started... - Brad DeLong ~ I'd just like to point out that the new Crocodile Dundee movie is not my fault and nothing to do with me. I think I speak for all Australians when I say that this is something that should not be happening. - Claire Bickell ~ > Personality tests are marginally more exciting, but less accurate. But I'm disqualified from those because I'm a software construct with no personality beyond a sarcasm generator. - Richard Baker ~ The Robots of Cthulhu will devour you all! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ok, I'm going to bed now... - Peter Horton ~ > You sure know to turn a girl's head. I sure do. Big fuckin' c-clamp and a looong lever. That and my dashing "Get Duffed!" t-shirt. - Jim Battista ~ > Other blogs focus on more specific areas. Adrian Hon (www.vavatch.co.uk), award-winning lecturer on Martian exploration and author of several GCSE guides, links mainly to science-based sites - incidentally, he's 17. Well, I'm 18 now, and I only wrote two GCSE guides, and I don't really lecture on Martian exploration. Neither do I link mainly to science-based sites. Apart from that, it's absolutely correct - Adrian Hon ~ Karkkipussi! There. That's all my Finnish except for "Hakkinen" and maybe "sauna" if that's Finnish. - Jim Battista ~ Fuck. Where's my tinfoil helmet? It's never there when I need it. - Lars Henriksen ~ My daughter is single and her father is rich. - Terry Pratchett, no longer accurate ~ >>>> \'You *Put* Money Into My Retirement Account?\' >>> \'You Put *Money* Into My Retirement Account?\' >> \"You Put Money Into My *Retirement* Account?!\" > \"You Put Money Into *My* Retirement Account!?\" You give all my money *away*!? - Paul Walker ~ Mine had two nicknames: "the bunny" and "fuckin' piece of crap German crap nice car nice car please start you useless pile of German scrap metal superior German engineering my ASS!". - Amanda Lowery, talking about a car she used to own ~ > Assuming that you're a wrathful deity oh very much so, what do think i do all weekend, but be wrathful and stuff. - Steven Gross ~ Why watch Dawson's Creek? What reason is there? Buffy has it all plus vampires. - Martin Lewis ~ Has anybody seen _Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer_? Is it true that one of the characters develops a multi-stage telescoping biomechanical death willy? - Richard Baker ~ One of my friends is a vetinary student and he once told me about the time they had to learn to do rectal exams on horses. One of the students fainted when her arm was entirely inside the horse, slid out and fell onto the ground, and was promptly covered in horse shit. I'm glad I'm a physicist... - Richard Baker ~ But better than that footage of the dude who's doing Something behind a hephalump and the hephalump sort of sits and his head, his entire head, goes into the animule's ass. Jim, who for that reason among others avoids hephalump tuchuses. - Jim Battista ~ Do you think if I point my camera at girlies around campus they'll strip off for me? - Steven Gross ~ _King Cobra_ is without a doubt the best movie about a giant hybrid snake featuring both Pat Morita and Erik Estrada that I have seen this month. - Jim Battista ~ I seemed to have forgotten that throwing a frisbee involves a shouted "Sorrreeeee!" as it sails 20 feet to the left and 12 feet over the head of the person you're throwing it to. - Amanda Lowery ~ Never underestimate how rubbish software can be. - Fionna O'Sullivan ~ My entire life is role-playing. I'm actually an astoundingly wise entity filled with benevolence and working for the benefit of all sentient beings, but I masquerade as a librarian. - Patrick Gliddon ~ For when you absolutely positively need to find the latest magazines about nuns giving enemas to Nazis. - Jim Battista ~ No problem, just catch the knives she throws at you. I've seen it done in films, it must be possible. - Kim Randell ~ Beware the hand of Eccles, for it is vengeful - Steven Gross, aka Eccles ~ I think I've done a good proportion of all the martial arts out there, and in each one I either get battered or I get in trouble for going mental (kendo masters dissaprove of headbutts) - Andrew Cunningham ~ I did a little fencing... Got in trouble when using sabres, because I put a huge dent in a face mask. Apparently just battering your opponent's sabre out of the way then whacking him on the head is considered cheating, even when he keeps on trying to kneecap you. Been years now... - Andrew Cunningham ~ Arguement against immortality: imagine an immortal Eccles! Arguement for immortality: imagine an immortal Eccles! - Steven Gross, aka Eccles ~ Ok, it's tennis, but really its about breasts. Those at least in the uk will have noticed big adverts for some sports bra manufacturer. It shows anna kournikova in said bra and the caption "only the ball should bounce". As she played her game at wimbledon yesterday i swear her breasts were bouncing too and I was watching quite carefully as well!!! - Steven Gross ~ What? There was a WORLD war? Let alone two of them?!?!?! my god when was this? I've heard nothing about in the news! I know there was that thing the Americans singlehandedly won, saving the rest of the defenseless world from an evil tyrannical genius (usually played by a british actor in any film of the event). But like a WORLD war, that is totally outrageous! - Steven Gross ~ Let me be the first to say HOLY SHIT! JESUS H. FUCKING CHRIST ON A BICYCLE! I knew it was supposed to be big, but, as the Onion said on 20 July 1969, holy living fuck! - Jim Battista, referring to a large solar flare ~ Note how, under Will's sudden reappearance and influence, it takes mere moments for the list to devolve from intelligent and scientific conversation about the effects of space on a human body to the effects of various planetary environemnts on werecreatures. - Amanda Lowery ~ But all I really want is for my art to live forever, for people to speak my name in the same awed tones they use for Larry Buchanan or Spencer Gordon Bennet or Ed Wood, for my film to move people in the same way as _Zontar the Thing from Venus_ or _Atomic Submarine_... - Richard Baker ~ Well, I was thinking more along the lines of the parts where Data says, "Captain, the gravimetric harmonics of the antichroniton field indicate that it may be possible to disrupt the tachyon flux with a polarised baryon stream." when he really means "It's a purple cloud - we should fire the green beam." - Richard Baker ~ Neat note: "Live free or die" appears on the license plates in the great state of New Hampshire. You can be prosecuted for cutting that part out of your tag. Isn't it ironic, don'tcha think? - Jim Battista ~ They'll have to get Denise Richards to play the human mastermind that saves us all, so we can watch her stumble over three-syllable words. - Jim Battista ~ Though I might grow a beard once... if I were to, I wouldn't stop with the little pansy-ass beards that people have these days; I'd want a Bad-Ass Motherfucker Moses-size beard. That and a big long shock o' hair, but on me I think it would have an interminable stage as a honky-fro. - Jim Battista ~ You Know How Einstein Got Bad Grades In School? Well MINE Are Even WORSE! - Amanda Lowery, quoting Calvin from Calvin And Hobbes ~ Because they took Buffy off for two weeks to show the infernal game, I think it's fair to say that snooker is now the enemy of all that is good. - Richard Baker ~ > How come this newsgroup keeps disappearing from my screen? Stop pressing the button on the front of your monitor, and it will eventually settle down. - Unknown ~ The list hasn't changed much, I now have 75 unread emails, and my first 'Hello'-mail has been morphed into a global domination battle between Ants and Goldfish with X-ray vision in less than 20 hours. Pretty good going - please keep it up !! - John Ingram ~ Actually I would like to live in the US for awhile. But I would leave before I became insane... - Lars Henriksen ~ > I just successfully defended my dissertation. Were there swords? And Barbarians? And horses? Did you have to paint your face blue and shout about them not taking your freedom? They May Take My PhD, But They Will Never Take My DISSERTATION! - Amanda Lowery ~ Love of money is the root of all evil (well, actually Barney is the root of quite a lot of it, but money is pretty bad too) - Richard Baker ~ > Ok, now I'm curious, what sort of interview takes 4 and a half hours? *cue disco music* *THIS* kind... And your qualifications are? Oh, well, with a resume *that*... lengthy... - Jim Battista, on a *different* kind of interview ~ what do you think makes you suitable for the post of supreme ruler of the universe? - Steven Gross, at a job interview ~ Eloquence is ... uh... fuck you! - Andrew Cunningham ~ Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to use the 'net and he won't bother you for weeks .... - Unknown ~ > I know I'm stating the obvious here, but didn't 'The Matrix' take its central theme from 'The New Testament'? Only that in the sense of having a special Saviour figure dying and coming back to kick ass righteously. Jesus didn't ride around on helicopters, fight an all-powerful conspiracy and shoot Big Fraggin' Guns. If he had, I might have kept going to Sunday School. - Tony Quirke ~ Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat - David Goldfarb ~ Scene: Hell is deserted. In the middle sits Lucifer, with a laptop and trackball. Zooming in on the screen we see a map of Earth, little dots moving about the surface, with tags showing the mortal sins the human represented by each dot has commited. The Devil is desperately trying to double click on the dots, but try as he might, he cannot land the second click on the same dot... Looking at Lucifer, we see that he is mouthing the words, "Bloody Microsoft Damnation 2000 - If I could only double click on this `Gates'..." - Amit Muthu ~ Here I was thinking that the Enterprise was a diesel. (And you know how tough it is to get those started in the inky blackness of space). "Take her out of orbit, Sulu." "Aye-Aye, Captain" *braw-WHARRRRRRRRR-tunk-WHARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-tunk-..... - Unknown ~ I didn't do the ghost story detective thing... i know you're supposed to find a big book called "History Of This House", or talk to a local and they say "arr, that's where mad meg ate her son", but I never did. - Andrew Cunningham, discussing a possibly haunted house he was in ~ Although she is cute, why should i covet my neighbours ass? - Steven Gross, questioning the logic of the tenth commandment ~ We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated. - Unknown ~ Believe in a loving god, infidel, or die! - Paul Walker ~ This reminds me of my new film plot. There's this huge passenger ship, and it's sinking. There is general panic, and lovers being separated forever and all that slushy stuff. But there's also an assassination squad of psychopathic vampires onboard who want to take out a Cardinal of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (that's the Inquisition to you and me) whose travelling on the ship. And get this: the Cardinal is a smart guy so he blesses the ocean, turning it all into holy water. The great torrents rushing through the corridors of the stricken vessel now cause vampires to spontaneously burst into flames... Titanic meets From Dusk Till Dawn - Richard Baker ~ It was suggested in another place that in years to come there will be 'Flame War re-enactment societies' dedicated to the recreation of classic moments in Usenet history - Jonathan Stowe ~ Is it only me who finds the concept of a bunch of girl guides (who tend to be pretty tough at least in my experience) armed with serious siege weaponry slightly scary. - Marcus Flavin ~ beer merely makes me more intelligent, more witty, a better dancer, and much better looking. - Andrew Cunningham ~ By removing the cover on this monkey you are invalidating your warranty - Steven Gross ~ > We have mojor flooding here too! Food truck can't get through and the storms are breaking up the satelite feed and I only got a pixalated Buffy tonight, no ones worrying bout that are they. Oooh, I could Pixilate buffy any day of the week. - Steven Gross ~ I'm not a Geek, I'm a criminal mastermind. - Claire Bickell ~ Internally consistent and all, but not enough BOOGA! and EEK! and SHRED! for my taste. It was *really* about all them people interacting in the face of Great Problems, and I like my schlock *schlocky*, dammit! I want BIIIIIG SKEEEERY monsters that do Weird Shit and, ideally, violate basic principles of physics. - Jim Battista, on the movie Pitch Black ~ > And Will, you bastard, there _weren't_ shapeshifting alien vampires in _Gandhi_ Yes there were. They're only in the Director's Cut, though. - Amanda Lowery ~ I find that bonkers is such a subjective term. We prefer the use of "differently sane" - Steven Gross ~ Anyone who makes a little red-haired girl the object of affection can't be all bad. - Amanda Lowery, on the death of Charles Schultz ~ But I like my body, why shouldn't everyone be able to bask in its gothic perfection. Proportions perfect as if designed by a blind woodsman. - Steven Gross ~ And a friend once had to interview a man whose full legal name was Glory Be Free Salvation Holly Hazel Basil Brown. He went by "Bud." - Jim Battista ~ Sometimes a bit of melancholy is a perfectly charming counterpoint to the drably delirious ecstacy of my day-to-day existence. - Patrick Gliddon ~ Politicians and diapers should be changed at regular intervals, and for the same reason - Unknown ~ > .... I'm backing up on December 31st... I going to stick a firecracker in the fan of my kids' old P133 so my wife will think it actually blew up and then we can buy a new one without her being pissed at me for a month. How's that for a plan? - Unknown ~ Well...my first marriage was with a woman chosen for personality, intelligence and education. Take my advice for what it's worth. Marry for hot sexual passion. It may end up the same way, but the bimbo won't be able to argue back as effectively. - Unknown ~ Seeing a giant turtle get taken away in an ambulance is coolly surreal - Jim Battista ~ And just like all Poof Daddy tunes are old classics with the licence plates changed and the serial number filed off. - Steve ~ > Hey! Stop being Tolerant! > This is the Net. you're ment to rant in ALL CAPS and insult peoples appearance, loved ones and personal choices in great detail for a spelling mistake, let alone holding an opinion different to yours. James is right. It's all there in the FAQ. - Werebat ~ I think I'm probably descended from the guys who allegedly went out hunting, but spent all their time arguing about the best way to do it and never got around to pursuing any actual prey. If they had anything to do with the development of intelligence, it's because they needed it in order to invent elaborate stories to explain why they didn't catch anything. - Patrick Berry ~ > b) what is the least form of transportation used in the UK Hollowed out Brazil nuts adapted to use baking powder as fuel. > and why? They don't work and are too small. - Dan Sheppard ~ > My wife and I are trying to have a baby, and we both train in karate. Son, you've got some serious misconceptions about how babies are made. Why don't you have a seat? This may take a while.... - Bill Baldwin ~ My mum once accused me of "pedanticness". When I told her the word was "pedantry" she left the room without saying anything... - Dave Kennedy ~ I am dyslexic of Borg. Prepare to have your ass laminated - Lane Gray ~ Those of us who are on line all the time can't be reached by phone. No mathematical finagling of the poll results in going to produce "And then there's this crowd who figures that the creation of the Universe took billions of years but was actually done in the last six days before the deadline, which is why there are so many bugs." - Paul Ciszek ~ Paul pauses to consider if a smiley is needed here then remembers this is uk.* and decides the readership understand that "irony" doesn't mean "made out of iron". - Paul Oldham ~ > Why can't you believe in "natural selection driven by God?" You can , but it requires God to drive with his eyes closed. - Robert Pearlman ~ > " Kannada - state language of Karnataka, India". They have one of those alphabets, like Thai or Georgian, that looks (to me) like zillions of little o's with fun connecting bits and swirls. It's BUTTS! The Kannadian Alphabet is made of BUTTS! Some of them even have BUTTHOLES and POO! It's posts like this that make me hope none of my future potential employers read Usenet. - Bill Newcomb ~ ATTENTION: Last night I scarfed a medium-size extra spicy taco pizza while watching the ballgame. This morning I feel the rumblings of an impending massive gassive, so as soon as I get to work I make my way to the porcelain convenience and OH MY FUCKING GOD I FEEL LIKE I JUST SHIT A 50-POUND TURD MADE OF MELTED STEEL!!! WHAT, DID SOMEONE HIDE IN THE TOILET BOWL AND RAM Q-TIPS SOAKED IN GASOLINE UP MY ASS OR WHAT?! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IT HURTS OW OW OW I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL NEVER EAT CHEAP DELIVERED SPICY FOOD EVER AGAIN I PROMISE OH MOTHERFUCK IT'S THE MOST PAINFUL SHIT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, I'VE GIVEN BIRTH TO A BURNING TRUCK TIRE, FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKF I just wanted to make sure that hundreds of computer systems worldwide had this message on it. It's kind of a neat feeling, as I sit here soaking my ass in a bucket of ice, to know that my bodily functions can be flashed around the world in an instant. OW. OWOWOWOWOWOW. - Unknown ~ I say it's about time that Physics began reasserting itself as the Most Evil Science. We've been losing a lot of ground in the past decade. What with cloning and genetic engineering, Biology has overtaken us in the public eye as the branch of science most likely to destroy the world. It's time we got back some respect. - Pam, Mad Scientist in Training since 1991... ~ > I have no friggin' idea when im supposed to go back to school. Two weeks ago. You had a math exam today. - Jon Nadelberg ~ > If you really want it to be sporting, you should have just as good a chance of losing (getting killed) as the animal. Puma hunting with kitchen knives is the only sport for me. Wimp. Try doing it with spoons sometime. I'll even be generous and let you use a spork first time out. - Tom Galloway ~ > Andrew, where exactly is the Melton Grange Hotel? LAT 052N05'52.5" LON 001E18'56.7" (I *love* my GPS :-) - W.B. Hill ~ I like my dogma extra crispy! - Michael Duff ~ > You are wrong. The Bible clearly states that we shall sit at the Great White Throne By golly, you're right. I was on the Great White Throne a few minutes ago. Darn those beef bean burritos! - Charles Taylor ~ I urge each and every one of you to change settings at random, uninstall identies, be forced to reinstall your isp config and say "fuck" a lot. It's a great night in - Michael Williams ~ even now my elite squad of Sandra Bullock bimbots are preparing to go forth and secure me world domination - Ikse Davodargnizrovi ~ And why is it I only meet Nobel prize winners when I'm drunk? - Jim Evans ~ I suppose if I had half a brain, I would have worked it out for myself. But if I had half a brain, I'd be dangerous. - Colin Woodhouse ~ Damn Satanist kids these days have no respect for tradition. - Dean Lenort ~ > Shit, d00d... I'm running a 400 MHz P-II, clocking the bus at 100 MHz, two 8-Gig IDE's, two 5-Gig Scuzzies, 128 Megs of PC-100, a 36X IDE CD player, a 4X scuzzy CD burner, a 1-Gig scuzzy Jaz drive, 16 Meg AGC video card, Adaptec wide scuzzy controller, USR 56K modem, AWE 64, and a Netgear NIC, and it all happens on my big 20" monitor... neener, neener, and um... neener. My computer only runs at 200MHz. But *I* have a really big penis. - Unknown ~ Big photo safari going down tomorrow. Me and Steve are heading down to the Balboa Peninsula for a day of fun and photography in the sun. Steve says he wants to get some "surf shots," but I know he's really going to be scoping the babes in the bikinis. "Pay no attention to the 300 mm lens, miss, just keep bending over to rummage in your beer cooler." Says he's bringing a monopod, too. Pervert. - Chuck Atkins ~ Larceny is never the answer but it is fun and a good stress reliever - Bob ~ > Could someone please post a couple of seconds of the Hallelujah Chorus? OK...aHEM: HAAAleLUyah HAAAleLUyah. halleluyah halleluyah haLEEEluYAH Dum, dum, dum...HHHAAAALLLLeylouya - Rick Fethers ~ Oh dear. I just imagined Klingon square dancing. - James Wolf ~ I thought applauding the return of the sun was touchingly pagan. `So the dragon has spat out the sun! Letting the shaman roger my virginal daughters was worth it after all... Hurrah!' - Sam Nelson, regarding the 11/8/1999 eclipse ~ There's nothing - I mean *NOTHING* - I hate worse than when my porn insults my intelligence. - Unknown ~ >> Or Caligula and the horse he appointed to the Senate? > No, that one's true. The horse's name was Incitatus. And did a better job than Jesse Helms, but Incitatus was an entire horse rather than just one part. - Michael Chary ~ >> You might try alt.test (or something like that) for test postings. Last time I used it, it also carried large numbers of encrypted postings from Bylorussian secret agents. > How on earth did you know *who* they were from (unless they used very poor encryption, or the password "Minsk" or something)? Oh, it's easy - the standards of espionage have plummeted in recent years. Last Sunday, driving on the A414 we came across a road sign for Harlow, Epping and Secret Nuclear Bunker. - Matthew Malthouse ~ > the blue whale doesn't have a glutius maximus :) That's because early humans considered whale ass to be a delicacy. Millions of Big Ass Blues as they were called were slaughtered just for their gluteal meat. Now vast tracks of ocean which used to thunder to the farting of these noble giants lay mute and unbubbling. - Rich Clancey ~ > Gandalf makes some remark about how the Elven smiths, when they were experimenting with the whole ring idea, cranked out a bunch of rings that were, so far as they were concerned, basically toys; "but still, to my mind," Gandalf adds, "perilous to mortals." An unadorned silver ring, which -- if you hold it in fire for a moment -- begins to show runes of flame, spelling out, in Elvish: "HELLO WORLD". - Andrew Plotkin, on _The Lord Of The Rings_ ~ The problem is that we occupy an enormous place in the American psyche, and they can't understand that they don't occupy an enormous role in ours. They think of us as "that country who used to own us", and they imagine that we think of them as "that country we used to own", whereas in reality we think of foreign countries in general as places that we used to own, and America as just one of them. It's as if we are the pimp, and they are just one of our many bitches. They think about us all the time, but we never really think about them, not in a historical sense: we only think of them in the present tense. - John Rowland, talking about the US from the UK perspective ~ When writing any sort of report, the writing style must be passive third person past tense. "The survey was carried out", never "we went out and had a look". "Professional judgement was exercised ", not "we flipped a coin". "The central issues were debated", not "we had a raging argument about it down the pub". - David O'Brien ~ When I was growing up, I used to think British universities were full of smart intelligent people. And I was envious. Then I learned that the best British universities were really filled with silly buffoons. And I was even more envious. - Darin Johnson ~ Mr Softley, when it comes to talking bollocks you are indeed captain of the good ship testicle. - Peter Rhodes ~ > Bill Gate's parents should have been given a condom. They were. It was an MS beta. - Gary Burnore ~ Strong is the man who can fart without distorting his inner strength. - Roel Van Der Meulen, in PGG ~ He's not a pervert! And I know, because I'm a pervert and he's never at the meetings! ;) - Scott Scurlock ~ We're comics fans, mister. We only discuss gods when we know how much they can bench press and what their power levels are. - Bob Kin DC ~ I visualize Jackie Chan, in robes and purple-and-green face-paint, being beat upon by Obi-Wan. Jackie is disarmed! His light saber drops down a ventilation shaft! But no, he picks up three folding chairs and a sofa and keeps fighting! - Andrew Plotkin ~ I've known about the dangers of sex for quite a while, but having some girl shatter my skull with her tongue wasn't one that I'd have expected. - Otto ~ Damnit, Peter, when are going to get it through your thick head that pairs of socks do not consist of two identical units? If you keep leaving them alone together, the Alpha sock is going to eat the Beta sock, every time! - Devon Erik ~ What the hell is the matter with this newsgroup? I ask a couple simple questions and get reams of useful information, informed opinions, and helpful recommendations. Even the disagreements are polite. What is this? The Stepford Usenet? - GGJRanger ~ On what day did the Lord create boy-bands, and couldn't he have rested on that day too? - Greg Chivers ~ We're a Phone Company. Don't fuck with us. - David Gerard ~ You know, if I ever go on a violent rampage, I'm going to do my best in advance to get rid of anything worthwhile that I own, and make sure that my comic boxes are packed with Archie comics, my bookshelves are overflowing with underlined copies of Beatrix Potter, and 'The Sound of Music' is sticking out of my VCR. Give the media something to really chew on, you know? - Unknown ~ I don't think we'll ever see a free-willed AI entity come about from sloppy programming... although that fucking paperclip in Word 97 seems to do whatever it fucking wants... - Goebbels ~ >>> Had anyone ever done anything gross to a pizza before? >> Well, let me ask *you* a question: do you consider rape "gross?" > Jim, what are you saying? You raped a pizza? Orally. - Jim Mackey ~ > Do you believe in REINCARNATION? Tweet. - Mike Jewell ~ And enough with this "year of the woman" crap? The population of the world has been more than 50% female for about three years now. Men are now a minority. Shouldn't everyone with two nuts and a bolt be whining "discrimination"? Of course, we don't, because we're "man enough" to not give a shit. Give us football, billiards, Penthouse, and hard rock, and watch how much we care about our wife's "emotional issues" and "personal fulfillment". - Mike Bahr ~ Satan's tools, man, computers are Satan's tools . . . help . . . . - Mark James ~ > I still don't understand why you hate smileys. A smiley killed my father. - Ian York ~ Jesus Christ on a dance floor: "Help! I've risen but I can't get down!" - Delain ~ The N'th digit of pi is "4". It's really "N" that we don't know. - Larry Moran ~ Anyway, when you die, it's just all dark and stuff. That's why i brought my shoes with lights on them that flash when you take a step. I love those shoes. - Mortis ~ In the Unix world, inconsistency is not a bug but a feature. Every program gets its own individual set of switches and commands to demonstrate the creative spirit of its author(s). Consistency is left to Windows and other systems which serve unimportant purposes such as getting work done. - Christoph Nahr ~ If no one ever mailed in haste to repent at leisure, it sure wouldn't be *Usenet*. - Mary Sophia Novak ~ There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write. - Terry Pratchett ~ Let's sign him - he's got a cool name. - Matthew Roberts, on his reason to sign a certain football player ~ Sometimes a submarine is just a submarine. Even when it's long, hard, and full of seamen. - Jerry Boyajian ~ I'd prolly last about five seconds, I mean, let's face it, I'm not a pedophile, I don't cheat on my taxes, and I read books. A model Belgian I'm not. - Nils Desle ~ An aside: I have a friend who was an extra in "Chasing Amy". She plays the Viking-type woman in the beginning and the Borg at the end. Now, next time you see it, you can say, "hey! some guy I know of in Kentucky is friends with that Borg!". - The Gonzo Lager ~ You know what John Lennon would say about all this if he were alive right now??? He would say: AAAGHH!!!! HELP!!! I'M IN A BOX SIX FEET UNDERGROUND!!! LET ME OUT!!!!!! - WWS ~ I'm sure the statistics will back me up on this. If not, then I'm going to make some up that will. - Rune Moberg ~ I bet thieves would prefer to steal a plain, off-white Bug to one that was painted in a rainbow and had my email address stenciled over the rear window. - Annnnna, talking about her VW beetle ~ Books tend to be sold on word-of-mouth. And I think it is a good sign that your fame is increasing because no one has bigger mouths than Americans. - The Gonzo Lager, addressing Terry Pratchett ~ I would have given _The Puppet Masters_ as a better example of a Nuclear Whale Abortion made from an excellent book. - J. Brad Hicks ~ If love is blind lingerie makes great braille. - Carol ~ I remember a black friend of mine being asked by a random drunken punter what tribe she was from, at which she looked him straight in the eye and replied 'Wimbledon'... - Alex Page ~ Kids aren't afraid of computer jargon, so use correct terminology when replying. "This is a floppy drive." "This is a CD-ROM." "This is an external modem." "This is a General Protection Fault in kernel32.dll. Whoops." - Gus Silber ~ It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's *American* editors. - Terry Pratchett ~ Surely the ability to hate for no legitimate reason is what makes us human? ;-b - Matthew Du Plessis ~ > I came, I saw, I got a boner Shouldn't that be, "I saw, I got a boner, I came"? - Unknown ~ Linux is a free unix clone for the PC (originally, many other systems use it now) developed by Linux Torvalds because he was quote: "dissatisfied with other operating systems", this is presumably Finnish for "very very bored" :) - Chris Horry ~ The thing about Tom Clancy is that you can start reading a Tom Clancy book when the plane takes off in London and you're still reading it when the plane lands in Sidney. And then you can use it to beat snakes to death. - Terry Pratchett ~ I've got muscles that will bend most types of pasta. - Darin Johnson ~ I got two CSEs, one in metalwork and the other in biology so if you want your dog welded I'm your man! - Alexei Sayle ~ Windows is starting to sound like one of those cartoon machines - y'know those humungous complicated things with springs, cogs, birds, the kitchen sink, plumbing, a rolling ball (or two), and internet explorer 5.0. - Lincoln Yeoh ~ how did they know he was British, ... was it his bearing ?, was it the cut of his suit ?, or was it the eight foot floodlight union jack tied 'round his head - Mark Datko ~ > Some people get visions of Jesus or Mary - why don't I get one? You're not buying the right brand of tortilla. - Honus ~ I'm sorry, but you seem to have used the word 'plot' and 'Star Trek Series' in the same sentence. - LoneWolf ~ The labs in our school used to have a really great notice with a list of chemicals which "must under no circumstances be mixed together". I ask you, what would you have done? - David Roy ~ > Rev 15:3 And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Ba Ba Black Sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. - Aron ~ I have to say that if I was facing me with a throwing knife, I would be scared. Especially if I knew I was thrwing to miss. - Supermouse ~ saving princesses from prison and torture is okay with me, as long as I can *also* blow up planets. - Raihan Kibria ~ As a matter of fact, what would happen if they found the gene responsible for stupidity, and based abortions on that? The Usenet population would drop like a fuckin' stone come 2025. - Pavel Radioactograd ~ I'd imagine that a 40-year-old woman would find me unbearably sexy and be driven to distraction by the fact that I'm engaged and, therefore, unavailable. Of course, in this case the 40-year-old woman would be Sharon Stone. - Djperry ~ Stop it, Stop It, STOP IT - right now! Just where do you two think you _are_?!? This is _USENET_ - not some namby-pamby forum for civilized discourse and actual information exchange! Apologies and counter-apologies - what's next? Actual content?!? - Grant Gainey ~ ...we are programmed to die 'round about the time when our children are old enough to survive by themselves, as a man of fifty I think civilisation is a damn good idea. - Terry Pratchett ~ The pinnacle of cheese evolution is, to my mind, Cheeze Whiz, which (for reasons that need no further exploration) I have successfully used to stick an article of clothing to a wall. All other forms of cheese cower in its shadow since, unlike all other forms of cheese, it has a useful function and therefore a place in the universe. - Joe ~ > Genearlly, when on the net, I'm in my underwear. Me too. But the people in the Computer Lab are starting to complain. - Mike Ralls ~ Funny you mention that, I saw Saving Pvt. Rayen last night, and _boy_ did it make me feel good about being an infantry man! [that's pronounced ca:non fo:der]. Seems like all the training we went through was a waste of time they should have just made us practise bleeding, well I suppose that's not true I am pretty good at shooting cardboard-head cut-outs, hell if we're ever invaded by cardboard targets they won't stand a chance [neither would the green balloons stuck in them for that matter]. - Motti ~ Well the old joke goes that if someone pulls your finger you fart. People often walk up to me at parties an say "pull my finger" and if anybody does then they let it go. I'm not sure about the history but it probably had something to do with the Americans. - Rodney Rutherfurd ~ The people who gleefully talk about the death of the printed word are the ones who don't read it in the first place because they find it too difficult and it isn't cool. - Terry Pratchett ~ There is nothing like being phoned up at two in the morning by the manager of a Nuclear Power station who says "You'll never guess what's happened this time?" - Terry Pratchett ~ Some people need a reason for bad jokes. Others need an excuse for bad jokes. I just need something to aim them at. - Kevin Hackett ~ Is this about the Dallas thing again? I mean I was all alone on that grassy knoll with my brand new Draganov[TM] complete with telescopic sights and I just _had_ to check it out, I wish you guys would stop making such a fuss about it, I mean seesh! - Motti ~ My big Y2K worry is whether I'll be at a party making out with some chyk like everyone else who is human, or whether I'll be at home drinking a punchbowl full of egg nog while my microwave's timer counts down the new year while making popcorn. And if I'm at work doing Y2K testing during the countdown, and I don't have a girlfriend at work, I will find something to impale myself on. - Nick Bensema ~ It doesn't work that way, Nils. You can't just go out, buy some seeds, and raise breasts in the back yard. If you could, gardening would be much more popular among men. - Tom Harrington ~ Bill: "Captain Ted, this is most uncool. The engines, like, can't take the strain!" Ted: No way! Bill: Way. I'd pay to see that in a Star Trek series ;) - Martin Goodson ~ > IF GOD IS LIFE'S SERVICE PROVIDER WHY HAVEN'T I GOT HIS I.P. NUMBER ? Maybe he's installed a firewall? :-) - Jan Ullrich Bister ~ It's my hypothetical communist state. If you want to be Distributor of Resources get your own hypothetical communist state. - T.J. Wilkinson ~ > a Microchip is a small (grain of rice-sized) device that is put into the dog just under the skin, usually near the shoulders. A vet or animal shelter will usually have a scanner and they scan the dog. The best part is, a chipped animal can easily be remote detonated! - Lokari ~ Never underestimate the procrastination of IT managers - Oliver White ~ Space shuttles cannot manoeuver like the Millenium Falcon, I don't care if it is the new XR-71 model with the go-faster stripes. - Shaun Salter, on the movie _Armageddon_ ~ Perl can bend steel bars and move mountains. Perl can tie back the hands of time. Perl is good for the goose and for the gander. Perl can beat up Mike Tyson with one hand tied behind its back. Perl can make a rock so heavy it can't lift it. Perl has saved the rainforests, it has been to the moon, and it has cured all major diseases. It has exceeded all known bounds. It has mapped the universe and created an exact duplicate. Perl has danced with angels and dined with Shakespeare. Didn't you read the manual? - Brand Hilton ~ > Raspberry jelly is not commonly recognised as an aphrodisiac. That all depends upon where you put it... - Matthew ~ if you continue in your misguided attempt to introduce logic and reason into a Usenet discussion, men in sunglasses and black suits will be forced to land their silenced helicopter on your lawn and explain to you the error of your ways. - Chris Suslowicz ~ Well, I thought we were just celebrating the year 2000 because it's the year 2000. It's neat. Just like looking at your car's odometer and noticing that you're just now crossing 20,000 miles and you haven't yet changed your oil which is probably why it's been making all those nasty clanging sounds and also, melting. - Jon Nelson ~ Now, if Titanic had shown the death of Culkin too, I may have gone to see it. "Oh No. I'm Boat Alone. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*glub*glub*glub*" - John Barberio ~ Is that kind of like the logical consequence of Highlander... There can be only.... *hack* [thump] - MegaMole ~ Do you have puns in Texas? - Les Bessant ~ See, this is USENET, that great wonderful medium that allows us to interact and slander people ALL ACROSS the fucking globe! We discuss. We share. We offer thoughts, feelings, and occasionally some really good nudie pics. - Unknown ~ Well, enough rambling. If you're still reading this -- why? Do you think something of actual significance is going to appear here? Of course not, this is a USEnet post. - Mike Powers ~ Everyone knows what really happened to Elvis. Some guy put him in a box with a phial of poison gas and some radioactive stuff, and now he's both dead and alive somewhere along the intersecting bits of the earth's discontinuous probability axis. Or have i put the wrong brain on again? - Russell ~ I've always wanted telekinesis. Nothing more, nothing less. With it, I could move myself around, pick up hot objects, clean things out of the kitchen sink drain, lift skirts, save gas, warm myself in the winter, cool myself in the summer, maintain fusion reactions, change the channel without a remote, type with my arms folded, stop bullets, kill vermin, and, most importantly, induce a female orgasm at a distance. - Jason Mathews ~ Well a friend did this with one of my pint glasses, we only had black though so he covered it in runes and demonic symbols. It became The Evil Demonic Pint Glass Of Doom / Discomfort / Mild toothache / Bit of an itch / ... - Unknown ~ I don't know why anyone would doubt the existence of such an allergy. I have always been allergic to semen and am constantly looking for ways to get rid of it so I can sleep better. - Don Whittington ~ Oh bloody hell! I just sneezed on my keyboard! How am I going to get all that out ?! Perhaps I ought to tell Bill Gates I just discovered a different way of doing 'sticky keys'! - Andy Davison ~ It's odd, though, when you think about it. Will I ever win a Hugo or Nebula award? No. BFS or World Fantasy Award? Not a chance in hell. Major children's book award? No -- not gritty, not relevant, too popular. The Booker, etc?..I'm on a different planet. And then suddenly there comes this OBE, out of the official honours system, which I'd never, ever considered had anything to do with me. I find it very strange and curiously democratic... - Terry Pratchett, discussing his OBE ~ now how do i turn this thing off .... this button ...... No that plays music, ok this one ... no that just turns the light off, Help I don't know how to stop this progra*#$#...................... connection dropped - Robin Halligan ~ I think both bits of Ireland celebrate St Patricks on March 17 (specially the American's whose great-great-great-great-great-great-grandad once grew a potato who think's this makes them Irish despite the fact the the other 255 grandparents are from elsewhere). - Glyn Bradley ~ A Claymore mine is an ingenious and therefore extremely nasty device. It is a small metal box, slightly curved. On the convex side is written "THIS SIDE TOWARDS THE ENEMY" which explains why literacy is a survival trait even with US marines. - Annotated Pratchett File ~ I've always been told that the New Zealand Position was *behind the sheep*.. - Steve Boyd ~ > What d'you think Picard's always looking at on that fold-down screen of his he always closes when Riker comes into his office? Probably old episodes of Star Trek, or perhaps surfing on the federationnet for porno pictures ;) - Patrick Hulten ~ Why are they saving replicator energy anyway? The whole idea is that energy is interchangable with matter, so next large asteroid you find, feed it in and it's big macs all round. - Matthew ~ I once tried to fly. It hurt. - Kie ~ A friend of mine, a fan of the series, has a theory that there's actually a second ship following the Voyager out of shot, carrying spare parts and extra shuttlecraft and so on. Whenever an episode ends, this ship pulls up and helps repair any damage so that the ship is as good as new next week. It is, he says, the most sensible explanation he can think of. - Paul Andinach, discussing Star Trek Voyager ~ I never wanted to be a definition! I always wanted to be... a lumberjack! - Leszek Karlik ~ I'm not a freak, but I play one on usenet. - J Buckley ~ Hey, I'd love it if the Spice Girls went down on me as often as Win95 does... - Robert Wilderspin ~ I don't make mistakes. I make prophecies which immediately turn out to be wrong. - Murray Walker ~ I call it "science," but I treat it the way a peasant in a fantasy novel treats magic: something that somebody somewhere with a special hat understands, so I don't have to. - Richard Eney ~ That there may be mental powers that science can't explain...well, I won't argue with that. But I suspect a man with a turn-you-into-a-frog spell would be a little nervous about going up against a man with a simple pump-action shotgun, even if he was allowed first go. - Terry Pratchett ~ Why do the aliens always abduct the audience of the Ricky Lake Show? - Terry Pratchett ~ Mort isn't fashionable UK movie material -- there's no parts in it for Hugh or Emma, it's not set it Sheffield, and no one shoves drugs up their bum... - Terry Pratchett, discusses possible movie adaptions of his books ~ Why the hell is Baby Oil called *Baby* oil? I can't offhand think of any use for it other than making something slippery. Why on earth would you want to lubricate a baby? - Void ~ When sky-diving, it is deemed unprofessional to scream and flap your arms. Just use your emergency chute like everyone else. If that fails, please try and steer away from my house, as we've just had the roof re-tiled. - Kevin Hackett ~ The last known assault on Edinburgh Castle took place on 16 April, 1998 when a drunk American tourist on his way home from a pub decided to scale the walls and take the fortress for Scotland. Foiled by the ingenius four foot steel fence, the seige quickly ended, and peace has reigned ever since. - Unknown ~ Murray: And! Oh my gosh! I think! Yes! There are flames coming out of the back of the Ferrari! James Hunt: That's his brakelight Murray. - Morph, describing a Murray Walker-ism ~ I think you may have a different bible to me. In mine the hymn goes "do da diddly dum, diddly dum, diddly dum" with god using thunderclaps as percussion. - Dids ~ All of the above is subject to a "As far as I can remember" disclaimer and a "I was never terribly good at physical chemistry" disclaimer. - Unknown ~ football ("sah-keerrrrr") - MegaMole ~ Phew. I haven't felt this intimidated since I discovered the Jackal was after me. - Tannhauser ~ Brits! Not only do they have to act better than us . . . they often end up doing things better . - Unknown, American ~ I just bought a new VIC 20, where do I put my CD's? - Unknown ~ > you really are a bigot, aren't you! Well its news to me, but if its in usenet it must be true ? :P - Niyaje ~ I'm 90% certain that [Faster Than Light] travel is impossible. I'm 99% cartain that it won't be done in my lifetime. I'm 100% certain that someone, somewhere, is working on it in his garage as I write. - Peter Bleackley ~ I'm a pacifist kind of guy. I sit in front of a keyboard writing quite amiable sort of books, without much violence in them, and it's very nice just occasionally, to push that aside and shoot the shit out of something. - Terry Pratchett, on his computer gaming habits ~ Linux has no downside. I even renamed my box Monica 'cause it's so cooperative. - Rashputin' ~ I got a "50" card on my eighteenth birthday. My (2nd) cousin wrote inside, "I couldn't remember your age but I hope this is somewhere close". - Adrian Morgan ~ Now, the next, understand, the very *next* person who says "I'm only X", where X is a number less than my age, will suffer an extended quotation from a Monty Python sketch of my choice. - Mike Kew ~ Readest Thou the Fuckynge Manual? - Jonathan Feinberg ~ It was a good birthday yesterday. I know this, because I didn't feel really well until teatime today. I think it was that Polish drink, can't quite remember the name, the one that flashes into fumes at body temperature. Of course, it may have been the pork and leek sausages. - Terry Pratchett, talking about his 50th birthday ~ Sometimes I can shift a cold in just 14 days. - Haplo, on the effectiveness of a cold cure ~ hey, somebody owns the internet? can he make me a copy and send me the floppy? - Rita Fernsler ~ > Tell me honestly, is there anything you have ever let stop you? Crash barriers, big warning signs, walls, locked doors, big people who want me to stop, 'best before' dates... - Kevin Hackett ~ As a nature-lover, I enjoy seeing animals in their native wilderness habitat, provided that it is within 20 yards of plumbing and fast food. - Dave Barry ~ Alcohol and calculus don't mix. Never drink and derive. - Unknown ~ ALL CRAP SHOULD BE IN UPPER CASE ONLY. - Tom Harrington ~ Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you think it will take, even if you take into account Hofstadter's Law. - Unknown ~ The element of surprise is useful, but the element of total and utter confusion is, in my experience, indispensable... - Russell ~ If my calculations are correct, spammers will have used up the world's supply of exclamation points and dollar signs by August 1998. - Blornx ~ > Didn't see so much of the hand signals, but I *did* hear the rumour that having driven a bus in Rome is a precondition for becoming a tank driver in the Italian Army. I didn't even know buses *had* a reverse gear. - Paul Tomblin ~ If you ever include me in your lame-ass haikus again I'll shoot a fucking harpoon up your ass!!!!!!!!! - Bizarro Tallies ~ The Spanish Inquisition! Attila the Hun! Caligula! Stephen Boursey! Catherine the Great! Hansen! SOMEONE owes us an apology, and by God Timothy looks like the man for me! - Ian York ~ I can't say anything stupid now, I am too depressed! - Arthur X ~ Don't give up on a crystal if it has had a traumatic past, though. If you lavish enough care and attention on it, it will return your love, and soon forget its painful extraction. Remember, a crystal is for life, not just for Christmas. - Adam Cherrett ~ I tried all the beers on tap (in duplicate or triplicate or more) one night. But one of the pints must have been off, 'cos I was really sick the next day. - Martin Lee ~ You are in violation of code SPAM3010-02, "Taking up excessive cyberspace with pointless, verbose, arrogant drivelling." Your keyboard has been towed. - Jim Deeming ~ We're just friends. Honestly. I did teach her how to juggle, though. - Lupus Yonderboy ~ Statistics are rather unimportant for a newsgroup, because four out of three people online can't count. - Dagny ~ Well, he's a big sentient starfish with prehensile arms. This is cool. Not as cool as a talking gorilla of course, but still cool. - Tom Galloway ~ As far as I know...I have been writing completely legitible English. - Jill Rogers ~ If I'm not mistaken, one of the Ten Commandments explicitly stated, "Thou shalt not click on Jesus" Get thee behind me, Satan! - Smokin' Dave ~ > Y'know, I hear they reserve a special room in Hell for loop-hole artists. Well, yes, but unfortunately there's a side-exit for any cases in which the demon in charge hasn't filled out the paperwork correctly. - Graham Nelson ~ It's when I make those purchasing decisions that I'm really glad we have the 82nd Airborne and all those leftover Tomahawk missiles. Screw the New World Order, I want cheap gasoline and I don't care who we have to nuke to get it. - John Mozena, talking about the Gulf War ~ Reports that Prime Minister Tony Blair was a soldier of the future, constructed entirely from liquid metal, sent back in time to 'terminate' the Queen Mother cannot be confirmed. - Olly Johnson ~ Here's another thing I can't understand... when the driver finally shows up with my pizza, I'll make a polite comment like "What took so fucking long this time?" To date, I've never had a driver smile at me... it just doesn't make any sense. - Unknown ~ Many people don't realize that Popeye was one of the greatest Existentialist philosophers of his day. - Stephen Smith ~ Newest conspiracy theory concerning unfortunate deaths of Michael Kennedy & Sonny Bono: Those trees were planted - Charles Dimmick ~ > FOOD FOR THOUGHT: If a student in a sex education class becomes pregnant, should the teacher flunk her or give her extra credit? I think the teacher should advise her to take the oral exam next time. - Jon M ~ Yeah, but then a telepathic Ganymedan Slime Mold oozes through the seal on his stilltent and asks to borrow a cup of yoghurt, and offers to help him with his girl-trouble. - Unknown ~ I regret to inform you that no further membership is available - you never know when a BBC secret agent will apply to join, so it is limited to me and my cat, Jess. - Tom ~ > The Fort William golf course is a good source of edible mushrooms in season. Does that entice you further? Those white dimply truffles with 'Ping' written on them still break your teeth even after several hours of cooking ! - Chris Gilbert ~ I'm 17 and finding a girl that isn't obsessed with standing around in hallways looking stupid is very hard. - Clint Levijoki ~ My wife has a tendency to comment when we see a full-breasted woman: 'Those are fake.' My response: 'So was the Death Star. But that doesn't mean it still wasn't cool to look at.' - Steve Clemetson ~ A virus which makes you wobbly is bad enough, but one which inflicts HP equipment on you is evil. - Malcolm Ray ~ ALL OS's suck. But some are more sucky than others - Peter Evans ~ The worst that can happen is that the smoker pulls out his gun and shoots you and everyone else on the train. - Mark Anderson ~ No, really I don't harm animals - but then again this is a poodle. - Don Sterner ~ The official religion of NZ is rugby & beer, closely followed by more rugby & more beer.. - Max Reid ~ Rupert the bear trousers, yellow shirt and cream cardigan (just because it's shirt&tie doesn't mean I can't been weird and seriously unhip) - Claire Speed ~ Does anyone out there have lederhosen (and the accompanying Alpine sheepherder accesories) that I could borrow? Of course, this is an emergency, as all borrowings of lederhosen tend to be. - Clark Stern ~ The McDonalds regional office confirms that there is no "Mr. Pazuzu" in the employ of the McDonalds corporation and that it is against company policy to give managerial positions to Babylonian demons. - Karlo Takki ~ > And following too damned close. Driving nose to ass is asking for trouble. Yeah, one sudden stop, and your whole head could just slip right on up there. - Steve Daniels ~ There was this huge anti death penalty demonstration going on in San Francisco some years back... I was "jus' passin' thru" and came across it. So I stood there on the kerb singing to my heart's content, and the protestors' annoyance... "Plop! Plop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh, what a RELIEF it is!!!" I hum that song every time someone gets gassed. - Swan ~ We write the way we do for several reasons. One, we're capable of understanding the subtle differences between words that to the ignorant are differentiated only by the 'fanciness.' And second, many of us enjoy language, just get a kick out of recklessly throwing big words around. - David Wren-Hardin ~ Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled knife whilst burning *black* candles. - Anthony DeBoer ~ There's a distinct difference between pathogens and things that merely don't taste good. Botulism is an example of the former, while Bud Lite is an example of the latter. - Joel Plutchak ~ > The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ LOVES *You! Trust The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and become a child of God Almighty and LIVE forever in His Kingdom! But does He love my cyberpet? And if so, why did He let it die? - Tirya ~ I think "Goosnargh" shoudn't be used except for those uncomfortable silences that occur when you find out someone you've been friends with since childhood is gay. - Joseph Malik, using a term from _The Meaning of Liff_ ~ Televangelists and infomercials? (Sorry...I implied there was a noticeable difference.) - Chance ~ you cannot distinguish two electrons. There's no way you can paint one red so that you could pick it out later. - Tim Serpas ~ harder than seeing a UFO piloted by Elvis crashing into the Loch Ness Monster - Neil Barker ~ You can't break the laws of physics so you might as well drink beer. - Danny Sichel ~ I deduce from your comment that you either do not speak English as your native language, or you are an American who is unfamiliar with Usenet. - David Bell ~ The ride to the airport is more dangerous than flying the airplane. If you don't believe me, come ride to the airport with me and I'll prove it! - Kevin Dudley ~ I live in the U.S. where any humor other than dumb American humor is forbidden. - Joseph Malik ~ Don't mess with me or I'll give you the BADGER! - Unknown ~ Ha ha ha! The bikini has driven me mad with lustful desires! Bikini evil! Make me evil! Rrrrr!!! - James Parry ~ I think the best addition to a voice recognition program which I have seen would have to be a keyboard. - Nick Andrew ~ Free Java solutions give me a woody. - Michael Peck ~ > how many users are on the internet? 65535. But it's been reading that for about five years now. - Keith Tyler ~ > This brings a question in mind. I would like to do some formation flying myself. No, you'll need someone in another plane as well. - Craig Welch ~ > There were no Jews in The Wizard of Oz! And there are no Jews in Pink Floyd! Coincidence? I think not. - Ted Frank ~ > Know why no other country will invade us? It's not because of our military, as formidable as that may be, but rather because the US of A is the largest armed camp in the world, and by God we know how to use them, too. No, actually its because all your beer tastes like piss :) . - Paul Campbell ~ Bill, can I have your brain, I'm building an idiot - Chris Hall ~ When we had a bull that refused to understand the concept of fence, he was usually served up with potatos and peas shortly after the 2nd misunderstanding. - Kim ~ I remember a Time travel website -- didn't you put that up next year? - Steve Miller ~ YOU ARE ALL WRONG. Q.E.D. is latin for "Don't argue with me you bastard." - Dazz ~ We've added two new volumes of story jokes, and unlike the rest of our crap, some of these are actually funny - FunnyTown Newsletter ~ > Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement." He released a song called "MMMBOP ! - Powdered TOAST Man ~ I bought a two-pack of Sno Balls at the 76 station and as I walked home, for one brief moment, I thought... "mmm, breasts". I cupped one of them in the package for a few seconds, but then I realized what a freak I was being and just ate them like the manufacturer intended. Come to think of it, another pack of those sounds good about now.. - Nick Bensema ~ > What would y'all say is the most heoric issue of a comic book, one where the hero/heroine(s) do something so incredibly noble and awe-inspiring, you say, "Wow, that's cool." I'd say it was my very fistr copy of Mickey Mouse, which ran back into the burning house to drag me out of the flames. Unfortunately it caught fire and had to be put to death. - Peter ~ How is it that the FDA certified lethal injection? The drugs would have to be approved as safe and effective. Kind of an oxymoron there for the intended use, eh? - Uncle Al ~ I feel like homey the clown after he hits some disadvantaged kids over the head with his big sock - Robert Allen ~ Ask not a question of USENET, for it will answer both "Yea." and "Nay." and "Ask in another group". - Simon Slavin ~ You misspelled XXXX - Ian Davis ~ Y'know, telling someone who's just spammed the 'net with a crap posting that should have gone to rec.sport.baseball to "put your file in a more accessible format" is like telling the guy who just drove his 4x4 across your lawn that he should have used an off-road tire for the job. - Michael Cox ~ Well i do have the book infront of me, but i dont have it open on the off chance that there might be a white hole on page 25. - Webrunner ~ To this day I still have no idea what the story behind Modula-3 is. I don't even know what Modula-3 is, but I have a feeling it the name of a magical sword to slay dragons. - Russell O'Connor ~ My friend said I was silly to judge the content of the book based of the style of the paragraphs. - Russell O'Connor ~ Everyone looks for the crash helmet when I change lanes on I-5. - Matt Harpold ~ I found it really bizarre that they kept showing Mother Teresa's body with a text overlay that said "Live". - Hank Gillette ~ > And although the carbon has been woven into a fiber to make it tough, the fact remains that carbon is a very soft material Yeah. Like diamond, for example. Remember, folks: a PhD is not an inoculation against stupidity. - Martin Hardcastle ~ Whilst your attempts at humour may be viewed by some, i.e. barmaids, as admirable efforts in intellectual endeavor they do lack one element necessary for this to be so: intellect. - Timothy Clarke ~ I love 'em all. Linux, mac os, win95, nt, whatever. Jesus loves all his retarded little oses. - Mr Pink ~ In the future, please take a lot of illegal drugs before posting to this newsgroup. - Stephen Edwards ~ I think what severely hurts Sandra Bullock's chances of getting a Best Actress nomination for In Love and War in the 1997 Oscars is that In Love and War was made in 1996. I agree; that's an awfully arbitrary, unjust-seeming technicality, but those are the rules. - The Rink ~ The technical term for the product of an organic chemical reaction is 'nasty black gunk', actually. - Unknown ~ If you take pride in your ability to be sensical, sane, and generally happy, you have been warned to stay away from country music. - Paul Clegg ~ Vehicles made from metals that burn are poor choices for combat vehicles, as fire is a logical outcome of taking hits. - Richard Bell ~ do super-heroes get a tax deduction? - Hosun S. Lee ~ > When someone is smoking where they shouldn't get some scissors and cut off the tip of the cigarette/cigar and walk away. You forgot to mention bringing a really good friend along (to remove the scissors from your ass). - Long Duk Dong ~ I want every spammer to consider spamming to be the single most terrible mistake he ever made. I want every spammer to have to change his name, move to another state or country, and get plastic surgery, as the best way to gradually get his reputation back through years of menial labor, after being simultaneously fired, divorced, sued, fined, shunned, and kicked out of his apartment within 48 hours of his first spam. - Keith Lynch ~ Call all 124 numbers on my list, and -- if the spams can be believed -- you will be so rich you can afford to buy a fleet of Saturn V rockets and send all the spammers to the moon. Landing stages? Why spend money on those? The moon is so boring with the same old craters. Tycho, Copernicus, etc. Why not a new set? - Keith Lynch ~ > When a foreskin is removed is there an aftskin? I hope so. - Adrian Tan ~ Admittedly, if somebody did something drastic, like mess up by collection of Terry Pratchett books, or put me in a city with no 7-11's nearby, I *MAY* decide to kill off all of my friends and re-create the universe. But even then, I'd pick another color besides green. - Hosun S. Lee ~ We have a self-repeating Jewish-Nazi paradox in alt.religion.kibology! In 10 seconds, it will expand and destroy all of Usenet! - Jaffo ~ your brain is so small you are looked down on by chimps and skinheads (well maybe not skinheads) - Hamster ~ > The brits have no sense of humor besides the fact that we kicked there asses Yeah? Anyone who kicks MY donkey is dead meat, and I don't care how many native Americans they've shot. - K. Newstead ~ I know the internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack, I just hope it wasn't intended as the method of communicating before, during and after said attack...... - Mitchell McCann ~ Why don't we move people around with giant slingshots? - Uncle Al ~ > Whales are not fish for a start. They're small insects that feed on bananas; we know... - Chris Hedley ~ Which, in your opinion, is the greater handicap? Being blond, or being deaf? - Pizzadrivr ~ He's often a very intelligent, highly observant, and correct pompous arrogant windbag, but he remains a pompous arrogant windbag. - Seawasp ~ It would be nice if future versions of Agent would provide streamlined methods for making coffee. - Jeffrey Kaplan ~ You can format them and use them for backing up your hard drive or use them for practice Ninja Stars. And they make dandy coasters, too! - SuperFlake, on free AOL disks ~ Anything is possible in a 6-book trilogy. - Greg Pacek ~ Perhaps to rededicate himself to his significant other who was quite peeved to find him always at the computer instead of tending to her womanly needs. - Bill ~ I bet his sidecar is filled with lime-green spandex. - Rob Nauta ~ Still, it beats routing packets through Mir like my ISP does. - Karlo Takki ~ when a woman shows you her middle finger then it does *not* mean she wants to marry you. - Tilman Hausherr ~ > To sacrifice common-sense for political correctness seems strange. You get used to it, after a while, living in North America. - Unknown ~ Even after 3 readings, I still get snot on the keyboard. - Lance Olkovick ~ You flame like a girl. - Unknown ~ I'm probably known as the "Dirty Harry" of the charity circuit. - Unknown ~ Then slam down the phone, trying, of course, not to pass out from blood loss. That's not so cool. - Unknown ~ If it doesn't cause permanent emotional scarring, you're not reading it right. - Troy McNemar ~ Regarding WIN95 visa vis Mac, people are saying it's almost as good as Macintosh. Well, that's fine for everybody that uses Windows -- I've already got a Mac and I'm very happy with it. The problem I forsee happening with it is this, if it is really as good as Mac where will they get their ideas from? - Douglas Adams ~ The correct word for "non-Americans" is not "pinko". It's "majority". - Paul Sleigh ~ It should be possible to use your computer to make one if you have a soundcard that's not, like mine, located roughly 2' outside the computer, in the drawer. - Kjetil ~ What do you take me for, a neurotic, insecure 22-year old with delusions of normalcy? - Vorpal Bunny ~ surely a race that exalts the Rambo movies can't be sentient?! - David Powell ~ _Somebody_ has to rule the Earth, and Mr. Gates seems like a nice enough fellow. - Richard Schumacher ~ Leave the cat alone, for what has the cat done, that you should so afflict it with tape? - George Lee ~ Oops. By observing our position, I changed our velocity. Now we're over there somewhere. Heisenberg, you WEENIE! - Stephen Tanner ~ The spokesperson denied any link between the organisation and radical doomsday cultists 'alt.cuddle'. - Stefan Kapusniak ~ All I can say is, if I do represent a next step along the evolutionary pathway, then I hope the step after me is better at matching colors. - Sean Smith ~ Even if you do go into a coma, you can still keep posting to Usenet -- everyone else does. - Lance Olkovick ~ If yawning is ever an olympic event, team Hawai`i will take all the medals. - Kekamaao ~ Can someone make a fool of himself on the usenet and then restore his reputation by claiming that he was pretending to be an American? - Phillip Cheek ~ I bet everyone here #1000 that some smart-arse is going to say something like "try getting a Mac". - Salesman ~ I can testify that no amount of Vodka the night before causes problems the following morning! It may cause lots of problems just after drinking it and just before falling asleep in the bath, but not after I've woken! - Wyrm ~ pokers and handcuffs and lacy black dresses meekly submitting to stern governesses hot melting candles and leather g-strings these are a few of my favourite things - Leo Breebart ~ But what do I know, I'm posting from AOL. - Functor ~ I have very poor spatial awareness. Does that mean that I'm gay? - David Toube ~ ... <--me eating dinner, compressed through the magic of being unable to type while eating - Owen Cameron ~ That's OK, just FAX me a pizza! Hold the anchovies, they stink up the thermal printhead..... - Gary Deutschmann ~ If god was going to give the Internet an enema, Cyberpromo headquarters is where he'd stick it. - Bill Mattocks ~ On the other hand, we're talking about Hollywood, which once tried to sell us a movie based on the idea that Keanu Reeves' brain was *too full of information*. - Wilde Hunde ~ On the same note, there is a certain irony to the killing of Versace. He dedicated his life to making clothes, and then he died wearing some. - Phil Oliver ~ Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that. - Joe Mason ~ Real men don't move the ROCKS when they pitch their tent. - Eric Wadsworth ~ The thought that God might be a half-baked undergraduate dilletante from Texas A&M is a truly terrifying thought. - Unknown ~ After drinking lots of Vodka, I turn into something incomprehensible that giggles a lot and sleeps in the bath! - Wyrm ~ I doubt if reality is going to have much impact on your thinking. - Jim Manson ~ Seriously, Chuck. The Word of God is the LAST thing I think about when I have a date. - John Ladasky ~ Vegetarians shouldn't mind eating animal droppings. Most of the vegetarian food I've eaten tastes like crap anyway. - Michael Wert ~ My sister is a vegetarian and fed us a veggy meal. Now I eat before I go over. - Michael Wert ~ A word of advice, though, never ever drink a Yoohoo while eating a Zero bar. It'll melt your brain. I've seen it happen. - Aaron Johnson ~ They didn't tell you about hunting down the wild haggis with starved and blood-crazed Haggis Hounds, did they? - Roger Douglas ~ Unix is user friendly. It is just selective about its friends. - Michal Jaegermann ~ Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is insdistinguishable from humor. - Francois ~ Corn really has a leg up over the bannana in the smarts department. - Rob Rogers ~ Please note I did not mention breasts. - Jonah ~ I'm just waiting for the inevitable moment when the martians come, prop the buggy up on some rocks; and steal the wheels. - Mark Reid, discussing the Mars Pathfinder mission ~ Your stuff is about as arousing as a softcore porn film starring the Reagans. - Douglas Lathrop ~ Either way, if I was going to walk through the valley of darkness, I believe a flashlight would be a worthwhile investment. - George Wenzel ~ Yay. You're the 134,934th person to ask for a virus in this newsgroup. Would you like a hero biscuit? - George Wenzel ~ Scientists are very strange people. - Brian Muirhead, deputy project manager of the Pathfinder Mars landing mission ~ Ah yes, Richard, you are indeed a shining wit, as the Rev Spooner would say. - Davis ~ Armed with an active imagination, a healthy Beatles collection, a pot of extremely strong coffee, and a dogged determination to find what I was looking for (if not the truth!), I set forth! - Kent Stewart ~ > Statistics show every 30 seconds a car is stolen in the U.S. You ask yourself, how can I protect my car from being stolen? I reply to myself "Keep it in the UK"? - Jamie Dyer, responding to some spam ~ curiously, the supposedly advanced alien race of Independence Day takes days to wipe out Earth's great cities, when everyone knows we could do the job in a matter of minutes. - Bruce Handy ~ Insanity is a great way to add spark and spontenaeity to life - Papius ~ There is a theory that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters they will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The Internet is proof that this theory is wrong. - Unknown ~ Phonetic spelling would be so *terribly* boring... - Greffindel ~ >> - then again, without pain, pleasure is meaningless. > And without pleasure, pain is meaningless! :) And neither would exist without caffiene. - Carlfish ~ Just to clarify here, I don't wear shining boxer-briefs. My genitals are radioactive. - David Magicovsky ~ We reserve American accents for americans, which in itself infers certain personality traits (or disorders)! - Wyrm ~ And assuming that you can clear this with my wife. She's sometimes a little picky about who sucks and fucks "Mr. Sluggo". - Mark Loy ~ Call me a romantic but I prefer my schoolgirls not encrusted with tetanus infested loam and the accompanying body lice, thankyouverymuch. - Mark Loy ~ Therefore, we may finally conclude, you are a fake psychic. Or a lemur. - Otis Viles ~ Why do we Brits go to Spain? To fight with the Germans, of course. - Mark Reid ~ YUPPie: Originally, the abbreviation stood for "Young Urban Professional People," but these days the stereotype is a cafe-visiting wanker in a suit. - Peter Caffin, from the Goth Code page ~ I once had a dog with several cats inside of it, but Animal Control found out. Seems some folks were a bit attached to their kittins, and were not amused when Percy maintained the natural order. - The Redneck ~ Like my friend Miriam says, it makes me feel like a Buff Computer Chick. - Marcie Kligman ~ Idle threats are like gargoyles. They look menacing enough, but don't actually do anything in the end. - Wyrm ~ Off to church and then to indulge my obviously sick mind in an orgy of ironing and Dr. Who videos - Sigridir ~ I love tinkering with my car, but the nasty toxic chemicals involved get a little scary. - Greffindel ~ By clever use of a double double negative I'm sure you could get something positive out of that. - Stuart Bruce ~ Feeling like an idiot, I was finally forced to break my cardinal rule of personal computing: consult the manual. - Gus Silber ~ You seem to breathe Oxygen. I'd like to sell you some crap! - Greffindel, on telemarketers and spammers ~ And a sad commentary it is on the cuisine of a country that people are unsure of the difference between coffee and excrement. - Evelyn C. Leeper ~ You can lead a troll to culture, but you can't make him think - Rasha ~ I'm not keen on having a bum that feels like the map on Bonanza. - Batty ~ When taking plutonium samples from the lab, remember to sign for them. We really mean it. If you don't, we'll have to take away your coffee priviledges. - Unknown ~ I'm on day 230 of my 30 day trial period with PaintShopPro... - Hotspur ~ I'll eat the chillies from hell, and THEN you'll be sorry. - Batty ~ That's why I wear a condom when I surf the net. - Greffindel, on browsing safely ~ She tried to do a sig with a rampant lion once, it ended up looking like a rampant starving pig. - Erin Lynn, on designing a coat of arms ~ Broccoli can look erotic if it is presented properly. - Norma ~ [Theoretical physics] is mainly pure thought, for which my physical disability is no handicap. I may be mentally disabled as well, but if so, I'm too far gone to realize. - Stephen Hawking ~ CD-ROM is equally useful as a coaster to protect the surface of your coffee table, or as a Ninja weapon of death. - Unknown ~ 2 square yards (front and back) of dog poop (YOU MUST PICK UP THIS ITEM, AS IT IS NOT SHIPPABLE) - Dennis Galion ~ Golf is many things, but I can't recall golf as an entity ever taking any sort of position on the need for a Jewish homeland. - Ted Frank ~ I believe you owe me a towel. Make it one of those fancy ones with the vitamin spots and stuff. - Joe Mason ~ If we cast the Tick as Frodo the Ring-bearer, and Frodo as the Mighty Blue Avenger, wouldn't people notice a few of the subtle differences between a muscular 400-pound guy in blue tights and a small hobbit? - O. Sharp ~ Rambo Sailor Marine Tough Guy Hard Bloke III - a party election broadcast by the Liberal Democrats. - Joss O'Kelly ~ WOODEN STICK 95 - For Popping Open Your Windows. - Unknown ~ Oh, you know, right after the Complaints Department of SCC it's gonna be the HTML-into-news-posters who will be on the wall when the revolution comes. - Unknown ~ Run!! It's Bunnycula, Lord of the Zombie Vegetables!! - Taarkoth ~ Wow, the summarization of the summary is longer than the summary itself! - Unknown ~ It was always, 'Socrates, what's the meaning of life', or 'Socrates, what is the nature of truth?' Nobody ever said 'Socrates, hemlock is poisonous!' - Unknown ~ SchrÖdinger's just a black box. Now Heisenberg, about him I'm less sure. - Unknown ~ He who controls the lemurs makes the rules... - Unknown ~ Remember, SCSI is not black magic. There are fundamental technical reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a goat at midnight in order to get a SCSI device working properly. - Arnoud Engelfriet ~ Can't wait to try my Twin-Armed Six Tomcat Turbine with Dual Salmon Induction!! - Unknown ~ The thought of being mooned by a camel is somewhat unnerving. - Unknown ~ If the world wants Big Macs, Levis, and ladies with silky smooth armpits it can bloody well learn how to ask for them in English. - Unknown ~ Other malicious and destructive objects can be found in my desk drawer, such as the fiendish "x-acto knife gun" I made one day using a ruler, some rubber bands and a whole bunch of scotch tape. - Unknown ~ I talk to my machines a lot. Mainly the rocket launcher. - Unknown ~ The T's accused the F's of smoking too much pot, which the F's were ok with and smoked some more, missing several days of class. - Unknown ~ In the middle of the 18th century, all the Morons moved to Utah. - Unknown, from a history test somewhere ~ Tanaka-san taught me what it means to rampage. He taught me how to destroy a building, how to avoid powerlines, and that those trucks with the dishes on their backs weren't for satellite pickup. - Unknown ~ The only thing that kept me from killing him was that I didn't know the penalty for murder in Florida. - J. Michael Straczynski, the executive producer and chief writer of Babylon 5 ~ I believe that there are certain things that you aren't allowed to do without the requisite training and/or experience. Flying a commercial aeroplane springs to mind, as does operating on sick animals. - Unknown ~ Anything can be fixed with a bit of imaginaion and a few rolls of duct tape. - Unknown ~ So you're the lord of dragonslayers with an anti-dragon nuclear warhead, twin vorpal swords, and an army of 10,000 at your disposal? Well _*I*_ have a zany wiggle-pen! - Unknown ~ Sacrificing a goat is not platform-independent. - Arnoud Engelfriet ~ Ve haff vays of makink you look as if you haff been tossed in ze puddink, no? - Airkanstryll Shadowblade ~ On the contrary, I am not picking my nose, I am performing a boogerectomy. - Unknown ~ I never go to the toilet because I'm too full of crap. - Unknown ~ I'm turning straight. And I will just fuck guys who are also straight. - Unknown ~ Statistical studies have proven that most science fiction fans prefer Swancon 23 to a poke in the eye with a pointy stick. - Unknown ~ Too much hot food gives me a runny bottom. This is not pleasent when you spend most of your life hanging upside down. - Batty ~ If you look very closely at the FBI footage, you can see Gandalf crouching behind the grassy knoll... - Unknown ~ I, too, deleted MOO2 a couple weeks ago. It gave me much more time for my international terrorist business. - Unknown ~ The other nifty thing is that all trees are in a state of quantum flux that causes them to be fallen trees and not fallen trees until someone actually goes around to see which ones are down. - Unknown ~ It's all absolutely devastatingly true - Except the bits that are lies. - Douglas Adams ~ Well, it was funny at the time... ;) [no, really, it was. we weren't even drunk. :) ] - Unknown ~ I prefer to think of myself as a fine mango liquer, personally. - Batty ~ AAAAAAUUUUGGGHHHH!!! TENTACLE SEX!!!! AAAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGHHH! - Ebony ~ My kid brother ... who started swilling coffee at about age 6 ... is 6'8" tall. If it stunted his growth I'm quite happy about it. - Unknown ~ Which infinity is the bigger one? - Unknown ~ Of course, this was before TJ changed the rules of the hunt and brought in bazookas. - Unknown ~ None of the Vikings had raped his wife, though one of the few remaining pigs had a surprised look on its face - Unknown ~ Now _everybody_ will want to be mutant computer nerds. - Unknown ~ Bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrent caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum... - Guy Macon ~ My cat Jake and I were chatting about this the other day. - Unknown ~ Reality Bites! I want my Fairy Godmother! - Unknown ~ I wonder if Ol' Satan gets annoyed by puns. He _sure_ gets right PO'd when we call him "Stinky-Stan the Brimstone Man." - Unknown ~ Capital letters are the work of the devil! - Unknown ~ GCI (Gameball Control International) is now lobbying Congress for a total ban of high-velocity bocce balls, claiming that they can penetrate body armor (and really make a mess of the lawn, too). - Unknown ~ Weapons are made of PVC and foam, with liberal applications of duct tape. - Unknown ~ Rather than tie the lure with string, which has a tendency to break, I used the handyman's trusty helper, duct tape. As you can see, it's a little larger than the average lure, but it has no problems hauling in the bigger fish. Now, my nephew Harold took this sucker out, and after he extracted it from the tree, the RV and his own backside, he finally got it into the water. While he didn't hook anything, he informs me that a great many fish died of fright the minute it hit the water and floated to the surface. - Unknown ~ > So, if you get drunk in Australia, It's impossible to answer any question that begins with that premise because you could never assemble a control group. - Unknown ~ If it doesen't work, shout out the word F*ck and e-mail me. I will try to help you out. - Unknown ~ Do yourself a favor. When your IQ reaches 50, *sell*. You will make a profit. - Arthur Chance ~ Flaming hot 6 foot rods shoved up through your testicles into your heart, killing you in an agonizing, slow death. or A world without cars, where everyone had to walk. 100% of men surveyed said they'd prefer a world without cars, where everyone had to walk! - Duncan Brown ~ I consider peripheral vision to be more important than 800 hundred quid's worth of latex. - Count Von Sexbat ~ I thought you might find it less offensive than the alien-abductee-ex-con-sex-abuse-surviving-trailer-trash-Warholian-hermaphrodite- gender-switching troll. - Unknown ~ > There's much more to acting than standing there and looking pretty. Pamela Anderson doesn't just stand there and look pretty. Sometimes she runs from one place to another and looks pretty. In slow motion. - Unknown ~ Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..." - Terry Pratchett, from "Hogfather" ~ His best effort so far was to get seriously squiffed the night before on a litre of Johnny Walker Black Label. - Batty ~ Freud is the man who discovered that most psychiatric problems are caused by your father, which is why he is remembered as the father of modern psychiatry. - Dave Barry ~ Chuck you farley, I'm not as think you drunk I am! - Unknown ~ I LOVE questioning my sexuality. Just so long as the answer I come up with is one I like. - Alrec Knebel ~ Satan is a Make Money Fast post? - Unknown ~ Being a counselor on the trip, I of course couldn't encourage or actively participate in such mayhem, so I merely provided technical assistance. - Unknown ~ The 'scrapings of the Devils Testicles', otherwise known as coffee. - Unknown ~ a truly international act, as we've played two gigs, one in London and one in Miami, and we are quite spectacularly not particularly good. - Douglas Adams, talking about his band ~ Chemistry is a lot like Krynnish magic...you study the books, you make the gestures, you mix the ingredients. Then you pray to your respective god/goddess that it works.... - Beth Long ~ If God were male He wouldn't have put balls on the outside. - Spider Plant Breeding Program ~ I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by. - Douglas Adams ~ Jesus not only saves - he also frequently makes backups - Unknown ~ Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon... - Terry Pratchett ~ I ran out of Plutonium very quickly and substituted dog food in the recipe. - Peter Mackay ~ No matter what I do with the grenades they always drop to Arthur's feet and kill most of the crew and the rabbit decapitates the rest. - Kieron Lawlor, on the Monty Python and the Holy Grail computer game