"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein "Never fight a battle you do not have to win." -Ardak Kumerian "Sometimes something's never been done before because everyone who came up with the idea before said, 'that would suck.'" -Dennis (DJ Dedd) "Only on [hwg]-ops would you knock someone around repeatedly, then say when he finally topples over: 'He's not very well balanced.' Well, -ops and Detroit." -"Major" Tom Grassia "No, no, don't tell me. I remember the training... it's this button, right? No, wait, sorry, I'll get it, really." -Hank "Friendly Fire" Cooper "I've got an IDEA!! Why don't I STARE at you so HARD, you forget your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!!" -Zippy the Pinhead (yow) [batty postulated:] > heh. maybe we're.....WEIRD??!?!?!?!?!?!?!? *gasp* [to which GIFG tendered a correction:] Ahem. I prefer the term "normality-related stress disorder" myself. *snork* "Can't win with that one, either. At least not in my book... though it doesn't matter too much 'cause I think I'm the only one reading it." -Sparrow "By way of analogy, arguably going into a church, interrupting the service, and asking directions to the best whore house might well be asking an audience with a number of qualified people. Yet common courtesy would suggest a more appropriate venue. Similarly for mailing lists." -Harold A. Driscoll "Judging by your wardrobe, you're probably already into death n' pestilence n' shit..." -Frank Zappa, "ThingFish" "Tables and Netscape is nothing more than a very bad joke. Netscape Navigator doesn't treat tables as a body element, but rather an alien from another planet." -Eva "The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence." -Lyman Bryson "Great minds talk about concepts. Average minds talk about things. Weak minds talk about people." -A. "Well, I said it before on -ops, and I'm more than willing to say it again, because I think it's particularly witty: If you _really_ want the [HTML Writers] Guild to work like medieval guilds did, please send your 14 year-old boys over to my house to scrub floors and do drudgework for me as I teach them my craft." -Kynn Bartlett, President, HWG "The basic problem is that the Internet is changing from a society where everyone shared common goals of openness, cooperation, and trust, to a society, well, resembling the rest of the world." -Gerald Oskoboiny "If I can't understand -- and I'm a pretty clever fellow -- how do you expect me to be able to explain them to other people?" -Kynn Bartlett "If you're going to argue, at least argue well." -Emily Ryan "I hate you! You don't understand me, and you don't understand my software!" -Edward Koren "You've been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life." -Pavement "I ran to get into shape once. I ran and ran and ran. Ol' Running Zorak, that's what they used to call me. Ol' Running Zorak. Then I got the worst bunion on the pinkie toe of my left foot... it done me in. So I started conquering galaxies! WHOOhahaha..." -Zorak "YES. Yes, you understand. If you don't, then smile and nod: it amounts to the same thing, anyway. Oh, you don't? Damn. Alright, I'll explain..." -Emily Ryan "I can't think of any more right now; strange people are wandering into my dreams and asking me things. I keep forgetting to kill them." -Angelynn Smith "Logic is the beginning of wisdom... not the end." -Capt. Spock {ST VI:TUC} "I suppose nobody would deny [this], if one states it in as vague a manner as that. And the reason that nobody would deny it is that it doesn't say very much." -Ron Carrier "I don't want to be a gloomy gus here, but this is the kind of morning that makes people take hostages. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about." -Viktorie Navratilova "No dogs were harmed in the filming of this episode. A cat got sick, and somebody shot a duck, but that's it." -{The Simpsons} "Okay, who's got the staple remover? My wrist seems to be attached to my forehead." -Janette Holdorff "ThursdayThursdayThursday! Nitroburning funnygoths! Watch as we turn the Riviera into a giant MUUUUUUDpit! Your $30.50 pays for your entire seat, but you'll only need the EDGE!" -frostbite, re: BauhausBauhausBauhaus "Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -George Bernard Shaw "Would you please not do that? There are normal customers in here." -A. "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." -Lazarus Long "Personally, I find reading poetry to be only slightly more boring than software manuals." -Chris Petro "It depends, I suppose, on whether something remains 'cool' once lots of people like it.... Quantum mechanics still seems pretty neat, in spite of the existance of the microwave." -Glenn Crowley "I have no problem with the notion that, say, Hootie and the Blowfish care about the music they make. It's entirely reasonable to think that they believe in what they're doing and that it's special to them. That doesn't mean that their music doesn't have the Hoover label on it." -Ron Carrier "Some of this stuff is well-produced, well-performed, well-written pop music that just doesn't interest me at all, but that doesn't mean those responsible for it should be thrown in a hole. Well, probably not, anyway." -frostbite "I've always wanted to be Kitana from Mortal Kombat. She rocks the muffin world." -MeeM "We must light the dark corners of taboo and stigma. We must silence the loud voices of ignorance." -Adina Wrobleski "The purity that man ought to cultivate is that of the mind. All things are pure; it is one's mentality which is evil." -Kaulavali "But I don't want to be happy... I want to be with you." -Eric Demian "I entered the office and tossed my hat at the coat rack. It missed, hit the heater, and instantly burst into flames. That reminded me: I had some work to do in Windows." -Lincoln Spector {The Maltese Penguin} "Objectivists don't like it when you point out that those 'helpless stupid people' are perfectly capable of ganging up on the 'wonderful clever people.'" -John Flanagan "With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation of pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offense at - Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt and horror of all things human." -Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" "Hee-Haw rules! It was WAY ahead of its time." -Christian Sass "Don't stay away from church because there are so many hypocrites. There's always room for one more." -Eric Demian "If you get bitten by a bug, tough luck... the one thing I won't do is feel sorry for you. In fact, I might ask you to do it all over again, just to get more information. I'm a heartless bastard." -Linus Torvalds, on development kernels "Computers can never replace human stupidity." -A. "Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product." -Ferenc Mantfeld "Applying computer technology to a problem is simply a matter of finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw." -A. "When have the denizens of this list let mere facts get in the way of bombast and rhetoric?" -John Flanagan "If you love someone, set them free. If they return to you, put several 8 inch blades into their head. If they return again, then run... just run." -from Lenore Issue #4 "You've got to be able to tell the world to fuck off and be able to laugh about it later... not sit there with your nose in your belly button and plot revenge. You're not winning the game if you're obsessed with it or obsessed with the pain that caused you to take part." -Rick Taylor "If you think that you are thinking, think again." -Amanda Wolf (^batty^) "I have no one to envy. I envy you having me to envy." -Duke Phillips {The Critic} "But you can't bulldoze a penguin..!" -Amy Wedell (MeeM) "This word isn't in my spell check, but I'm sure it's a perfectly cromulent word." -Eric Demian "Memory management is more imporant than end users, followed by the scheduler, device drivers and the update daemon. The end user ranks at the bottom somewhere, just beneath the screen saver. End users are just test loads for verifying that the system works, kind of like resistors in an electrical circuit." -A. "Children are like wine. Most of them should be poured out and are only suitable for those without taste, and they age badly. Others are capable of fine things if stuck someplace dark, damp, and out of the way for several years." -Joshua Weiner "I take my role as jester very seriously, because if you can't laugh at yourself, you're doing something wrong." -Teri King "My money's on the hierarchical, obedience-based structures of today, where the stupid cheaters are punished and the smart cheaters are put in charge, the stupid rule-obeyers are exploited and the smart rule-obeyers learn to cheat. But it all works, after a fashion." -John Flanagan "The true genius shudders at incompleteness -- and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not every thing it should be." -Edgar Allen Poe "Those who give up a little freedom for a little security will not have - nor do they deserve - either one." -Thomas Jefferson "'What's the best way to accelerate a PC?' '9.81 m/s^2'" -A. "There is no problem so large it can't be run away from." -Anne Lamott "Now, I really want to go have a bowl of Boyd Rice Krispies - the only breakfast cereal that is not only painful to eat, but makes an ear piercing noise when you pour on the milk." -Rob Havelt "Music, Martinis and Boyd Rice Krispies? 'Snap. Crackle. Die.'" -Jonathan Webb "Racism is a waste of hatred." -Jake St. Martin "And hatred a waste of time... take up cross-country knitting or full- contact origami iff'n you wanna do something REALLY useful." -Glenn Crowley "A 'computer expert' is a person who knows many ways to say, 'well then... let's try this.'" -Stan Hintz "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." -Albert Einstein "And *good* reviews - they're even worse - it's just someone's opinion; someone who has *Gotten* it; someone who understands the music, who the music speaks to. What right does he have to tell anyone else that they'll understand the music too?" -Rose Marshack (Poster Children) "Didn't I warn ye? That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself!" -Willy {The Simpsons} "The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." -Stanley Kubrick "Kids today have so many advantages I never had. There's no telling what I could've accomplished with a home computer and a handgun." -LeMel Hebert-Williams "One can never exceed one's potential. The closest possible feasible scenario is to exceed someone else's expectations, but the criteria for this is usually based upon some arbitrary prejudice." -Tarik Dozier "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -William James "I used to rock 'n' roll all night and party ev-er-y day. Then it was every other day. Now, I'm lucky if I can get a half an hour a week in which to get funky." -Homer Simpson "The best music has something to say, says it, and gets the hell out." -Andy Lester "Using a Microsoft product is like feeding the hand that bites you." -Matthew Isleb "OH MY GOD HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT MARSHMALLOW BUNNIES ON THIS LIST - YOU ARE FOREVER BANNED, INFIDEL!" -Amanda Wolf (out of context, of course) "Okay... you're so gorgeous it's making me nauseous. Can we go now?" -Heather Ross "I wonder if 93-year-old people sit around wondering, 'Ehhh, if I knew at 85 what I know now.... Boy, was I a stupid little fuck when I was 85.'" -Joe Nelson "If you don't want to run the risk of getting killed in military action(s), don't join the fucking army. It doesn't take too terribly much to figure that one out. If you want the G.I. Bill scholarship that badly, well, you knew the score when you signed the line. Now go stop some bullets and quit your whining." -samh "Face the music, people; if you're going to give your life over to a corporation, expect zero sympathy when you complain about the conditions you have to work in (as long as they're within legal limits, that is). Honestly, what part of selling your soul to the devil do you not understand?" -John Tynes "Something I just realized is that this book contains more words than the entire English language, which I guess explains why he has to use some of them more than once." -Matthew Sturges, "Two Months in Infinte Jest" "You know, maybe, just maybe, some jock's parents are going to have a little talk with their brash little bag of hormones and muscles, and have a word with him to say, 'Johnny, I know it's fun and gratifying to beat up weirdos and crush their self-respect, and expose them for the worthless people that they are, but please stop. They might be armed.'" -Richard Kinney "Adolescence is a surreal world: kids who don helmets and practice banging into one another for hours each week are deemed healthy and wholesome, even heroic. Geeks are branded strange and anti-social for building and participating in one of the world's truly revolutionary new cultures - the Internet and the World Wide Web." -A. "Listen to Yoda, dumbass!" -Emily Ryan "Not all people are annoying. Some are dead." -A. "People think that I hear little voices inside my head telling me what to do. That's ridiculous. It's more like a movie, with these little hamster guys that hold up charts and maps and other visual aids. You know, whatever they have to use." -Rob Havelt "Never discuss a dynamic resource organization with your mouth full." -Your Mom "It's not when you realize that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realize that you don't need any aid." -Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury "The same guy that put that scary albino out in front of your house to watch your every move... go ahead and check; he's there." -Rob Havelt "Are you now, or have you ever been?" -{THX-1138} "This is a ring of dark poets. If your poetry focuses on decadence, death, destruction, despair, disease, etc., PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR SITE!!! If you write poems about bunnies and butterflies, this ring is not for you unless the bunnies have rabies and the butterflies are flying out of a corpse's mouth." -A. "I don't wear pants and I don't know anyone who does!" -Zorak "Think Rocky, think Rambo, think Die Hard, think testosterone. You are a man, and as a man, you face your fears in order to conquer them! This is your day." -Marcus Battle, "How To Lay It All On The Line" "It is sad to think that the first few people on Earth needed no books, movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother Abel's brains in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks, and we have just taken that for granted all our lives." -Marilyn Manson "It is no wonder that kids are growing up more cynical; they have a lot of information in front of them. They can see that they are living in a world that's made of bullshit." -Marilyn Manson "Simply describing perl as giving you 'enough rope to hang yourself' doesn't begin to describe the amount of rope perl gives you." -A. "I know you would not like me anyway, because you are inferior to me." -Archers of Loaf "Any lane is attainable, at any time." -Miami driving motto "...the Buffy season finale was postponed due to graphic content by the wimps at WB who thought easily influenced high school kids might see it and decide to turn into giant snakes and devour their classmates." -SpyderMunky (Gerard) "What? I fed you; what more do you want?" -Stelios Valavanis "Moron... but at least he got to keep his soul." -A. "We have been studying earth culture for 1000 years... and what have we learned? There's no getting a decent cappuccino in the suburbs." -Posche, "Oh My Goth!" #4 "It's very difficult to bake when you rock so much, like me." -Gertrude Mintz {SNL} "They had no additional information about the Playstation2 that I can contribute. So, in the spirit of taking realism to the next level, I shot them." -Robert Ratayczak "Wisdom offers simple schemes, but truth is not so simple." -Walter Kaufman "And they said that selling monoclonal antibodies over the Internet would never amount to more than a niche market, and that it would go over like the proverbial lead zeppelin, and boy did we ever prove them wrong!" -Joe Nelson "There's no BOO YAing in baseball!" -Sammy Baseball "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor." -Wernher von Braun "Obscenity is a crutch for lazy Motherfuckers." -A. "The trick here is not to overcook it. A little undercooked is fine if your fish was bought at a decent place. I like it moist and flaky, just like my women." -Chris Schneberger "I work at Wal-Mart, where you'll often find the very worst clothing in the world on those who are walking evidence that mankind evolved from apes." -Dale Freeman