"Heard you were moving your piano, so I came over to help."
	"Thanks.  Got it upstairs already."
	"Do it alone?"
	"Nope.  Hitched the cat to it."
	"How would that help?"
	"Used a whip."

	"Hey, Sam, how about a loan?"
	"Whattaya need?"
	"Oh, about $500."
	"Whattaya got for collateral?"
	"Whattaya need?"
	"How about an eye?"
		-- Sam Giancana

	"Hmm, lots of people seem to be confused about the difference
between amd64 and ia64."
	"Obviously they've never had an ia64 drop on their foot.  They'd
know the difference then."
		-- Peter Wemm explains CPU architecture

	Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location.  Notice I say
"shop for", as opposed to "obtain".  This is the major drawback of home
centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
trees.  The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
	Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
a replacement.  The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
these sometime around the middle of next week".
		-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"

	"How did you spend the weekend?" asked the pretty brunette secretary
of her blonde companion.
	"Fishing through the ice," she replied.
	"Fishing through the ice?  Whatever for?"
	"Olives."

	"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded.  "And why
were you afraid to let her touch you?  I saw you.  You were afraid of her."
	"I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat
replied without rancor.  "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were
you.  As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be
deceived by appearances.  Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.  As for your
second question --"  Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested
in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then
licked himself smooth again.  Even then he would not look at Molly, but
examined his claws.
	"If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been
hers and not my own, not ever again."
		-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"

	"How many people work here?"
	"Oh, about half."

	How many seconds are there in a year?  If I tell you there are
3.155  x  10^7, you won't even try to remember it.  On the other hand, who
could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
		-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs

	"How would I know if I believe in love at first sight?" the sexy
social climber said to her roommate.  "I mean, I've never seen a Porsche
full of money before."

	"How'd you get that flat?"
	"Ran over a bottle."
	"Didn't you see it?"
	"Damn kid had it under his coat."

	Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small
misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of
the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to
see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or
background. It can be programmed to behave as if it were working with
uncertainty, but -- underneath, at the code, at the circuits -- it
cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that
remains unknown. In the painstaking working out of the specification,
line by code line, the programmer confronts an awful, inevitable truth:
The ways of human and machine understanding are disjunct.
		-- Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine"

	"I believe you have the wrong number," said the old gentleman into
the phone.  "You'll have to call the weather bureau for that information."
	"Who was that?" his young wife asked.
	"Some guy wanting to know if the coast was clear."

	"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
	"No," said GoodGulf, "but I can.  The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here.  They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:

	"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
	Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
	Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
	This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
	The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
	The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
	If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
	If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
		-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"

	I did some heavy research so as to be prepared for "Mommy, why is
the sky blue?"
	HE asked me about black holes in space.
	(There's a hole *where*?)

	I boned up to be ready for, "Why is the grass green?"
	HE wanted to discuss nature's food chains.
	(Well, let's see, there's ShopRite, Pathmark...)

	I talked about Choo-Choo trains.
	HE talked internal combustion engines.
	(The INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE said, "I think I can, I think I can.")

	I was delighted with the video game craze, thinking we could compete
as equals.
	HE described the complexities of the microchips required to create
the graphics.

	Then puberty struck.  Ah, adolescence.
	HE said, "Mom, I just don't understand women."
	(Gotcha!)
		-- Betty LiBrizzi, "The Care and Feeding of a Gifted Child"

	I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because we
use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently leads to
violence.  What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say, in traffic,
is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had time to think
of witty and learned insults or look them up in the library, we could call
each other up:
     You: Hello?  Bob?
     Bob: Yes?
     You: This is Ed.  Remember?  The person whose parking space you
	  took last Thursday?  Outside of Sears?
     Bob: Oh yes!  Sure!  How are you, Ed?
     You: Fine, thanks.  Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
	  "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..."  No, wait.
	  I mean:  "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
	  and ..."  No, wait.  (Sound of reference book thudding onto
	  the floor.)  S-word.  Excuse me.  Look, Bob, I'm going to
	  have to get back to you.
     Bob: Fine.
		-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"

	"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
	Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't --
till I tell you.  I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
	"But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
	"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
	"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
	"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
		-- Lewis Carroll,
		   "Through the Looking-Glass,
		   and What Alice Found There" (1871)

	I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service.  For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
	Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything:  "I came
by subway."  Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.

	I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me.
I pushed "1" and he just stood there.  I said "Hi, where you going?"
	He said, "Phoenix."  So I pushed Phoenix.  A few seconds later
the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix.
	I looked at him and said "You know, you're the kind of guy I
want to hang around with."  We got into his car and drove out to his
shack in the desert.
	Then the phone rang.  He said "You get it."
	I picked it up and said "Hello?"
	The other side said "Is this Steven Wright?"
	I said "Yes..."
	The guy said "Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from
your bank.  It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the
university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we
loaned you.  We would just like to know what happened to the money?"
	I said, "Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight.  I gave all
of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon...
and I would appreciate it you never called me again."
		-- Steven Wright

	"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
I think very probably he might be cured."
	"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
	"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
	The elders murmured assent.
	"Now, what affects it?"
	"Ah!" said old Yacob.
	"This," said the doctor, answering his own question.  "Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way
as to affect his brain.  They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and
his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant
irritation and distraction."
	"Yes?" said old Yacob.  "Yes?"
	"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order
to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical
operation - namely, to remove those irritant bodies."
	"And then he will be sane?"
	"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."
	"Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob.
		-- H. G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"

	"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."
	"Did you ever see a doctor?"
	"No, just spots."