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... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly.-- Dave Barry ("Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide")
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing--that is why professional ice hockey is so popular--so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear that tie with that suit, are you?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires.-- Dave Barry ("Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide")
Magnocartic, adj: Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
Landing: a controlled mid-air collision with a planet.
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry."-- Douglas Adams
High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.-- Christopher Morley
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'"-- Dave Barry
Arthur C. Clarke's Law :
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
'The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.'
(Ford making his way out of Milliways whilst under the influence of enough alchol to make a rhino sing) (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?', `Why do they die?', `Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?' (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
"The Hindenburg crash had 62 survivors and 35 fatalities. Of the 35 deaths, 27 resulting from jumping from the airship. Many of the remaining 8 deaths resulted from burns and injuries due to the ensuing diesel fuel fire."-- Dan Egnor
Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training.-- Anna Freud
"Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived."-- Oscar Wilde
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.-- Albert Einstein
Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.-- Robert Heinlein
"You know they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?"
"Really?" said Arthur. "No I didn't. For what offense?"
Trillian frowned. "What do you mean, offense?"
"I see."-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.-- Douglas Adams (Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Wreckless Driving -- You'd think that would be a good thing.-- Chris Sampson
As the main says, it has yet to be proven intelligence has any survival value.
Whether it deserves some respect is another matter.
...as opposed to Xena's paradox, which is, "How exactly can she fight in that leather outfit, and leave all of that flesh exposed, and survive?"
Alimony: the fee a woman charges for name-dropping.
'Anything that happens, happens'
'Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.'
'Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.'
'It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.'-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexeplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts)
Chicken Soup, n.:
An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.-- Arthur Naiman ("Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish")
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal, or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, of course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never, ever -- on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country--vote Republican.-- Barbara Ehrehreich ("Automating Politics")
"Being a minister's daughter means you get really good poppy seed cake at Christmas time, and you get really wonderful dresses and things made by these really nice little old ladies. And you also get this incredible amount of confusion. But when you're 14 years old, and you don't know what your beliefs are, you're taking on everybody's beliefs around you and you're making them yours. And I'm not about the institutionalized Church at all."-- Tori Amos (Little Earthquakes Video)
"...everyone else here is likely as stressed as you are, though much more competent and cynical."
-- Chris Johnson (a.s.r)
"One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to."-- Piers Anthony