There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord of Wu.  The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
	"An operating system," replied the programmer.
	The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief.  "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
	"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
tax laws.  By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outward
appearances.  When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas.  This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
	The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled.  "That is all good and well,"
he said, "but which is easier to debug?"
	The programmer made no reply.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

	There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors.  "Look at
how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit,
"I have my own operating system and file storage device.  I do not have to
share my resources with anyone.  The software is self-consistent and
easy-to-use.  Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?"
	The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his
friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the
midst of the data center.  Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean
of machinery.  The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted
as a primeval jungle.  The programs, each unique, move through the system
like a swift-flowing river.  That is why I am happy where I am."
	The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent.  But the
two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

	They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
	They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No Parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
	To wield oneself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
		-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"

	"They spend years searching for their natural parents, convinced their
parents will be happy to see them.  I mean, really, can you imagine someone
being happy to see an orphan?  Nobody wants them... that's why they're orphans!"
	The speaker is Anne Baker, founder and guiding force behind
Orphan-Off, an organization dedicated to keeping orphans confused about the
whereabouts of their natural parents.  She is a woman with a mission:
	"Basically, what we do is band together to exchange information
about which orphans are looking for which parents in what part of the
country.  We're completely computerized.
	"The idea is to throw the orphans as many red herrings and false
leads as possible.  We'll tell some twenty-three-year-old loser that his
real parents can be found at a certain address on the other side of the
country.  Well, by the time the kid shows up, the family is prepared.  They
look over the kid's photos and information and they say, 'Oh, the Emersons...
yeah, they used to live here... I think they moved out about five years ago.
I think they went to Iowa, or maybe Idaho.'
	"Bam, the door shuts in the kid's face and he's back to zero again.
He's got nothing to go on but the orphan's pathetic determination to continue.
	"It's really amazing how much these kids will put up with.  Last year
we even sent one kid all the way to Australia.  I mean, really.  Besides, if
your natural parents were Australian, would you want to meet them?"
		-- "National Lampoon", September, 1984

	This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive EasyFlow is a copyrighted package licensed for
use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it
and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
	We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive EasyFlow; this is just as well with us since
we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of
making anything out of all the hard work.
	If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go
around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not.  Just keep your doors
locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
		-- License Agreement for Interactive EasyFlow

	Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
	As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it.  I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane.  But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade.  Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
	The disease is fatal.  There is no known cure.  The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor.  From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease.  I don't have it this morning.  It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
		-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
		   from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
		   and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"

	To A Quick Young Fox:
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
		-- Lazy Dog

	To lose weight, eat less; to gain weight, eat more; if you merely
wish to maintain, do whatever you were doing.
	The Bronx diet is a legitimate system of food therapy showing that
food SHOULD be used a crutch and which food could be the most effective in
promoting spiritual and emotional satisfaction.  For the first time, an
eater could instantly grasp the connection between relieving depression and
Mallomars, and understand why a lover's quarrel isn't so bad if there's a
pint of ice cream nearby.
		-- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"

	Two men looked out from the prison bars,
	One saw mud--
	The other saw stars.

Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.

	Two parent drops spent months teaching their son how to be part of the
ocean.  After months of training, the father drop commented to the mother drop,
"We've taught our boy everything we know, he's fit to be tide."
	After Snow White used a couple rolls of film taking pictures of the
seven dwarfs, she mailed the roll to be developed.  Later she was heard to
sing, "Some day my prints will come."
	A boy spent years collecting postage stamps.  The girl next door bought
an album too, and started her own collection.  "Dad, she buys everything I've
bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me.  I'm quitting."  Don't,
son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"
	A young girl, Carmen Cohen, was called by her last name by her father,
and her first name by her mother.  By the time she was ten, didn't know if she
was Carmen or Cohen.
	Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled.  Ever
since, he's been talking about the good old dais.  His students planted a small
orchard in his honor, the trees all have square roots.

	"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
	"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to
food, right?"
		-- MacNelley, "Shoe"

	"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly.  "In the past year
strange and fearful wonders I have seen.  Fields sown with barley reap
crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts.
There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon.  Calendars are made with
a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance
salesmen.  The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in
square knots.  The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down
soggy potato chips."
	"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
	"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug,
"but I thought it made good copy."
		-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

	Vice-President Hubert Humphrey's loquacity is legendary, and Barry
Goldwater notes that "Hubert has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts
up to 340."

	On the campaign trail during 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater
stated, "The immediate task before us is to cut the Federal Government down
to size... we must take Lyndon's credit card away from him."

	A favorite 1964 campaign stunt of Barry Goldwater's was to poke a
finger through a pair of lensless blackrimmed glasses, saying, "These glasses
are just like [Lyndon Johnson's] programs.  They look good but they don't
work."
		-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"

	WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:

Firings will continue until morale improves.

	We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you
think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide.  If Interactive EasyFlow
doesn't work: tough.  If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow
messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us.  If you don't like this
disclaimer: tough.  We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided
by law, up to and including nothing.
	This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software
packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
	We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our
lawyers insisted.  We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the
attack shark at which point we relented.
		-- HavenTree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow"

	"We friends, yes?"  The shoe shine boy put on his hustling smile
and looked into the Sailor's dead, cold, undersea eyes, eyes without a
trace of warmth or lust or hate or any feeling the boy had experienced
in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, impersonal and
predatory.
	The Sailor leaned forward and put a finger on the boy's inner arm
at the elbow.  He spoke in his dead junky whisper.  "With veins like that,
Kid, I'd have myself a time!"
		-- William Burroughs

	We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why
you are so tired.
	There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought.
	The population of this country is 200 million.  84 million are over
60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work.  People under 20
years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work.
	There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves
19 million to do the work.  Four million are in the Armed Services, which
leaves 15 million to do the work.  Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state
and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work.  There are 188,000 in
hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work.
	Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail,
so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and
brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself!

	"Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn.  Evelyn, will
you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the
psycho-prompter couch?"
	"Thank you, Red."
	"Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing
your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior
pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
	"Yes, Red."
	"But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy
repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times.  Now,
at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off
your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900.  Now, any combination of
two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive
projections will put you out of the game.  Are you willing to go ahead?"
	"Yes, Red."
	"I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have
been checked for accuracy with her analyst.  Now, Evelyn, for $80,000
explain the failure of your three marriages."
	"Well, I--"
	"We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute.  First a word about our
product."
		-- Jules Feiffer

	Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
	Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen.  In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances.  Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision.  Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all.  Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others.  And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
	Time passed, unheeded.
	Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
		-- Wayfarer

	"Well, it's a little rough... it might not be necessary to drag him 40
blocks.  Maybe just four.  You could put him in the trunk for the first 36
blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly
scare the piss out of him, bumping alone the street, feeling all his skin being
ripped off..."
	"He'd be a bloody mess.  They might think he was just some drunk and
let him lie there all night."
	"Don't worry about that.  They have a guard station in front of the
White House that's open 24 hours a day.  The guards would recognize Colson...
and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported
that a bunch of thugs had kidnapped him."
	"Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks
and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going
around to the front of the White House?  There's a naked man lying outside
in the street, bleeding to death...'"
	"... and we think it's Mr. Colson."
	"It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?"
	"Yeah, I think it's safe to say we'd see some headlines on that one."
		-- Hunter S. Thompson, talking to R. Steadman on C. Colson,
		   ex-Marine captain, now born again, of Watergate fame.