GENWiki

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting."-Alan Dean Foster "To the Vanishing Point"

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe:

All my life I said I wanted to be someone…I can see now that I should have been more specific.

"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -Bill Davidsen

"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon

  "Women and cats do as they dammed well please.
   Men and dogs had best learn to live with it..."

  Alan Holbrook

"I'm at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk…."

  Two obviously high-class old ladies are strolling down a city
  street when they run across a grizzled, ragged old derelict
  lying drunk in the gutter, covered with garbage, sewer water
  running all over him.  "Hmmmph," sniffs one of the old ladies
  haughtily.  "Cleanliness is next to godliness.  William Shakespeare!"

  The drunk opens one yellowed, rheumy old eye, stares at her
  balefully, and replies, "Fuck you.  Tennessee Williams..."

A retired dentist who loves to fish. "Open wide," he mutters to the unseen fish as he waits for a tug on the line. "Now bite down. This may sting just a little bit."

Then of course, there's the way Keillor used to close his broadcast stories: "That's the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the men are smart, the women are good looking, and all the children are above average."

Keillor has a sort of low-key, "Huh? Whuzzat?" humor that I'm very fond of.

I have a Steven King line I'm fond of too. It's from _The_Dead_Zone, and it's not funny at all, but I find it to be true. Johnny Smith is talking to the wealthy father of the boy he's been hired to tutor. The father says something to the affect that there are three kinds of people in the world. 95 percent of the people are drones, zeroes. One percent are saints and one percent are devils, and that two percent are born the way they are. The other three percent_the people who get the vast majority of things in the world done_are the people who do what they say they will do.

of him as a classical author and you'll have a real good time. I recommend

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." – Sigmund Freud

"a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke"

                    War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of
                     things. The decayed and degraded state of
                     moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
                     Nothing is worth war is much worse. The per-
                     son who has nothing for which he is willing
                     to fight, nothing which is more important
                     than his own personal safety, is a miserable
                     creature and has no chance of being free unless
                     made and kept so by the exertions of better
                     men than himself.
                                       --- John Stewart Mill

                    Duty  then  is the sublimest word in the
                    English language.  You should do your duty in
                    all things.  You can never do more, you should
                    never wish to do less.
                                        General Robert E. Lee

      We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
            no confusion.
      -- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"

      I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance

in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

1. - Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

      Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had

become socially correct for girls.

1. - Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"

      He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have

ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.

1. - Henry Fielding, "Jonathan Wild"

In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it's often useful to have a nice, solid piece of wood in your hands.

1. - Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap

All obvious theorems are true.

1. - Pommersheim's Principle

All true theorems are obvious.

1. - Keane's Kriterion

      Ya gotta feel sorry for all them convicts in New Hampshire, stampin'

out license plates that say "Live free or Die."

1. - ???

I'm a clown. That's my sole mechanism of defense. Very few people will go out of their way to punish a clown.

1. - ???

      He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains

a fool forever.

1. - Old Chinese saying

Monty Python

"In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to the death for it."

Ripping Yarns

"Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some sheep's testicles for a bet…God, that bloody sheep kicked him…"

      "It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of

gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

      "Hit it."

Pink Panther

"Kato, what is going on in that little yellow brain of yours?"

1. - Chief Inspector Clouseau, in reference to a priceless white\

Steinway piano.

Dave Barry

Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter. We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

The Odd Couple

"A penny for your thoughts?" "A dollar for your death."

The Princess Bride

"Inconceivable!" "You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it does."

Daffy Duck

"Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!"

1. -D. Duck

"Consequences, shmonsequences! So long as I'm rich!"

1. - Daffy Duck

"Mine! Mine! It's all mine!"

1. - D. Duck

Politicians

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing."

1. - Gamel Abdel Nasser

"Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters."

1. - Ross Presser

 All men dream: but not equally.  Those who dream by night in
 the  dusty  recesses  of their minds wake in the day to find
 that it  was  vanity:  but  the  dreamers  of  the  day  are
 dangerous  men, for they may act their dream with open eyes,
 to make it possible.
                                    T. E. Lawrence
                                    _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_

 Always do what you are afraid to do.

                                    Emerson

    "It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's  more
    true  that  power attracts the corruptible.  The sane are
    usually attracted by other things than power.  When  they
    do  act,  they  think of it as service, which has limits.
    The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is  insa-
    tiable, implacable."

                                  David Brin
                                  _The Postman_

H. L. Mencken: "The American public knows what it wants,

                  and deserves to get it good and hard."

"Hankerin' for trouble, eh? Well I would like–" [aside] "I would like? I would like a trip to Europe!" "–I would like…"

1. -Daffy Duck, "Dripalong Daffy"

"Go on! Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers and gunpowder and cordite!"

1. -Daffy Duck, "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!"

"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… Now you tell me what you know."

1. -Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers"

"Go! And never darken my towels again!"

1. -Groucho Marx, "Duck Soup".

"Oh, I know it's a penny here and a penny there, but look at me. I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."

1. -Groucho Marx, "Monkey Business"

"The shortest distance between two points is through Hell."

1. -Brian Clark

There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.

1. Timothy Leary

"I'm a great housekeeper. I get devorced. I keep the house".

1. - Zsa Zsa Gabor

"The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it" (Reggie Jackson) I have some better ones that I'll send you once I get them.

                                 Paul Wilbert

"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."

1. Hitchhiker's

James Bond: What do you expect me to talk? A.Goldfinger: No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

                        Goldfinger

From a high school history teachers stash of student goodies:

                  (all spellings SIC)

" The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and

thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of

rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormic invented the McCormic raper which could do the work of 100 men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers."

On the old "You Bet Your Life" program, Groucho Marx was getting to know one of his contestants. The man told Groucho that he had 10 children. "Why so many children?" Groucho asked. "Well, I love my wife", the man answered. Groucho paused but a second, then said "I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!"

"Well, now, hold onta yer horses, there, Frazier. I mean, as a psychiatrist, isn't it your job to, uh, `seek and uphold the truth'?" "Oh, get real, Cliff."

1. – Cheers

A witty saying proves nothing.

1. – Voltaire

"J. D. Salinger… John Knowles… even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes… they've destroyed being an adolescent,Garraty. If you're a sixteen-year-old boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon."

                                  Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.

Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.

Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.

The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.

Hartley's First Law:

       You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
       on his back, you've got something.

Cole's Law:

       Thinly sliced cabbage.

A conservative is one who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.

Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and gets stuck.

The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.

Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Winston Churchill: "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."

Harry Bender:

            "Imagine the appeals,
           Dissents and remandments,
            If lawyers had written
             The Ten Commandments"

James Thurber: "I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere."

Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C.": "If man evolved from the ape, how come there are still apes around? Some of them were given choices."

Bill Watterson, cartoonist: "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

Unidentified Scientist: "After two years of trying, scientists at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center have managed to get a chimpanzee pregnant." Which proves that no task is repugnant to a true scientist.

Irv Kupcinet: "What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?"

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

1. - Ben Franklin

A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in that particular field."

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

1. - Stephen Crane

Be self-reliant and your success is assured.

For economists, the real world is often a special case.

Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if one went to Harvard).

1. - Edgar R. Fiedler

A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted

An ounce of vanity can ruin a ton of merit.

You know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot – and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers

1. - A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

1. - Samuel Goldwyn

A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.

The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

1. - Sean O'Casey

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

– Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply.

Jokes ABOUT major current events should be sent to topical@looking.on.ca Anything that is not a joke submission goes to funny-request@looking.on.ca

Administrative note:

Bush's oil company laded quote is from a paper called the "People's Weekly World"