Listen, Tyrone, you don't know how dangerous that stuff is.
Suppose someday you just plug in and go away and never come back?  Eh?
	Ho, ho!  Don't I wish!  What do you think every electrofreak
dreams about?  You're such an old fuddyduddy!  A-and who sez it's a
dream, huh?  M-maybe it exists.  Maybe there is a Machine to take us
away, take us completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of
the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the
other souls it's got stored there.  It could decide who it would suck
out, a-and when.  Dope never gave you immortality.  You hadda come
back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat!  But We can live
forever, in a clean, honest, purified, Electroworld.
		-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

	Looking for a cool one after a long, dusty ride, the drifter strode
into the saloon.  As he made his way through the crowd to the bar, a man
galloped through town screaming, "Big Mike's comin'!  Run fer yer lives!"
	Suddenly, the saloon doors burst open.  An enormous man, standing over
eight feet tall and weighing an easy 400 pounds, rode in on a bull, using a
rattlesnake for a whip.  Grabbing the drifter by the arm and throwing him over
the bar, the giant thundered, "Gimme a drink!"
	The terrified man handed over a bottle of whiskey, which the man
guzzled in one gulp and then smashed on the bar.  He then stood aghast as
the man stuffed the broken bottle in his mouth, munched broken glass and
smacked his lips with relish.
	"Can I, ah, uh, get you another, sir?" the drifter stammered.
	"Naw, I gotta git outta here, boy," the man grunted.  "Big Mike's
a-comin'."

	Love's Drug

My love is like an iron wand
	That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
	That I take before my bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
	That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still, my dear,
	Until my wife is wise.

	"Mach was the greatest intellectual fraud in the last ten years."
	"What about X?"
	"I said `intellectual'."
		;login, 9/1990

	Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."

	"Mind if I smoke?"
	"I don't care if you burst into flames and die!"

	"Mind if I smoke?"
	"Yes, I'd like to see that, does it come out of your ears or what?"

	Mother seemed pleased by my draft notice.  "Just think of all
the people in England, they've chosen you, it's a great honour, son."
	Laughingly I felled her with a right cross.
		-- Spike Milligan

	Moving along a dimly light street, a man I know was suddenly
approached by a stranger who had slipped from the shadows nearby.
	"Please, sir," pleaded the stranger, "would you be so kind as
to help a poor unfortunate fellow who is hungry and can't find work?
All I have in the world is this gun."

	Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan.  The
company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent
defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
	The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per
cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
		-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail

	Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile.  Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures.  One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation.  In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
	They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room.  For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement.  Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
	The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot.  The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any last requests.  Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago.  The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
	"This is crazy!"  Murray shouts.  "We're not spies!"  And he
spits in the sergeants face.
	"Murray!"  Esther cries.  "Please!  Don't make trouble."
		-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"

	My friends, I am here to tell you of the wondrous continent known as
Africa.  Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa.  Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule:  Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00.  Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30.  Now Africa is full of big game.  The first day I shot two bucks.  That
was the biggest game we had.  Africa is primarily inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
	The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions.  And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water.  They
weren't looking for a water hole.  They were looking for an alck hole.
	One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know.  Then we tried to remove the tusks.  That's a tough
word to say, tusks.  As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
embedded so firmly we couldn't get them out.  But in Alabama the Tusks are
looser, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
	We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
		-- Julius H. Marx

	"My God!  Are we sure he was a liberal?"
	"Pretty sure.  They pulled him from a Volvo."

	My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
even that they were always wrong.  Rather, I believe that science must be
understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
robots programmed to collect pure information.  I also present this view as
an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
the alter of human limitations.
	I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it.  Galileo was not shown
the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion.  He had
threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
stability:  the static world order with planets circling about a central
earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord.  But the
Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology.  They had no choice; the
earth really does revolve about the sun.
		-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"

	"My mother," said the sweet young steno, "says there are some things
a girl should not do before twenty."
	"Your mother is right," said the executive, "I don't like a large
audience, either."

	NEW YORK -- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
	Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries.  To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of
Nazareth.

	"No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so
simple, really.  "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now.  You just can't
hold people, you can't own them.  I mean it's only natural, a natural process
really.  Meet.  Love.  Part.  Life goes on.  There was never any reason to
expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know."  There were
those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated.  "I don't hold a grudge.  I
can't."
	"You do," Grandfather Trout said.  "And you don't understand."
		-- Little, Big, "John Crowley"

	Now she speaks rapidly.  "Do you know *why* you want to program?"
	He shakes his head.  He hasn't the faintest idea.
	"For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly.
"The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman.  "You take a program,
born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution.  You nurture the
program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever
stronger.  Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here,
a keystroke changed there."  She sweeps her arm in a wide arc.  "And other
times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very
*essence*, then beginning anew.  But always building, creating, filling the
program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances.  Watching
the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can
stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect.  This is the programmer's finest
hour!"  Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march.
"This ... this is your canvas! your clay!  Go forth and create a masterwork!"

	Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
tool sets for under $4?"  An excellent question.
	Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
administration.  In either the hardware or housewares department,
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home.  Buy it.
	This is the kind of tool set professionals use.  Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
direct sunlight.
		-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

	Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something
to be avoided than harped upon.
	Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being
reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might
just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something
about helping to postpone this reunion.
		-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"