This is a haiku

This haiku is mine

Oh wait,
this is not a haiku
Damn it, this is not a substantial haiku.
Ok, here is a fun and short dump of fortune phrases:
Snow Day -- stay home.
You may be gone tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that you weren't here today.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain
Q: Why should you always serve a Southern Carolina football man
soup in a plate?
A: 'Cause if you give him a bowl, he'll throw it away.
To be or not to be.
-- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
-- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
-- Sartre
Do be do be do.
-- Sinatra
You will gain money by an illegal action.
Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
You may worry about your hair-do today, but tomorrow much peanut butter will
be sold.
Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
Don't get stuck in a closet -- wear yourself out.
You have a truly strong individuality.
Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.
-- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of
absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone
of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
-- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"
You prefer the company of the opposite sex, but are well liked by your own.
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what
would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
career.
-- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
You will wish you hadn't.
Your aim is high and to the right.
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
You will have a long and boring life.
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
-- Mark Twain
You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact.
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
You may worry about your hair-do today, but tomorrow much peanut butter will
be sold.
Q: How many marketing people does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I'll have to get back to you on that.
In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and
struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny
and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the
crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.
-- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian
novel.
Are you ever going to do the dishes? Or will you change your major to biology?
October.
This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.
The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
December, August, and February.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: You won't find a lawyer who can change a light bulb. Now, if
you're looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb...
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can
be better."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Reply hazy, ask again later.
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-- Mark Twain
A is for Apple.
-- Hester Pryne
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
 done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your
life in such a mess.
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
Q: Why do ducks have big flat feet?
A: To stamp out forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have big flat feet?
A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
You will pass away very quickly.
Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
Your supervisor is thinking about you.
Ships are safe in harbor, but they were never meant to stay there.
Your lucky color has faded.
There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.
"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."
-- Mark Twain
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble.
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
Q: What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
A: You can't get down off an elephant.
Your lover will never wish to leave you.
You will triumph over your enemy.
Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.
You will step on the night soil of many countries.
Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
Questionable day.
Ask somebody something.
Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Oh, and have a nice day!
-- Bryce Nesbitt '84
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
argument.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
Your best consolation is the hope that the things you failed to get weren't
really worth having.
You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
Make a wish, it might come true.
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
Your business will assume vast proportions.
You will gain money by a speculation or lottery.
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
Tomorrow, this will be part of the unchangeable past but fortunately,
it can still be changed today.
You will be winged by an anti-aircraft battery.
The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
You are confused; but this is your normal state.
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
"My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice.
"I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
-- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
possess.
-- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
Q: What do monsters eat?
A: Things.
Q: What do monsters drink?
A: Coke. (Because Things go better with Coke.)
You will reach the highest possible point in your business or profession.
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can
be better."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
You will gain money by an illegal action.
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession.
You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy
officials have gone by.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
You have taken yourself too seriously.
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain
Q: What does it say on the bottom of Coke cans in North Dakota?
A: Open other end.
You'll feel devilish tonight. Toss dynamite caps under a flamenco dancer's
heel.
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
You have a strong desire for a home and your family interests come first.
Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very
very thin paper.
Q: What is the difference between a duck?
A: One leg is both the same.
You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.
Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner.
You are magnetic in your bearing.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
-- Mark Twain
You like to form new friendships and make new acquaintances.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
-- Wm. Shakespeare
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard III"
A gift of a flower will soon be made to you.
You work very hard. Don't try to think as well.
You will pioneer the first Martian colony.
Q: What do monsters eat?
A: Things.
Q: What do monsters drink?
A: Coke. (Because Things go better with Coke.)
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a
creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the
bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
put him at the head of the procession.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
You will pass away very quickly.
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we
are not the person involved.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
Advancement in position.
Q: What is the sound of one cat napping?
A: Mu.
You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.
You are confused; but this is your normal state.
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain
The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn
like fabulous yellow Roman candles.
-- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
Your motives for doing whatever good deed you may have in mind will be
misinterpreted by somebody.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
-- Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
-- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can
neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
-- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to powerfail recovery.]
Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on it!
Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A: The tame way!
Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
Don't feed the bats tonight.
Q: "What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic
existentialist?"
A: "Is there a dog?"
Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things
than someone who hasn't.
-- Mark Twain
Q: What do you call a WASP who doesn't work for his father, isn't a
lawyer, and believes in social causes?
A: A failure.
In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made
school boards.
-- Mark Twain
Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?
A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps
an eye on the two intellectuals.
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
Avoid gunfire in the bathroom tonight.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is
weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and
weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists,
but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist,
he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert.
-- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed"
You will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... posthumously.
This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
in reading it at all.
-- Oscar Wilde
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
of the way.
So you're back... about time...
You will be singled out for promotion in your work.
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.
Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner.
"Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?"
"Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please."
"A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I
mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look
down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are!
Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call
them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't
spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a
tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories,
including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I
got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And
there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun,
charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special*
presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two*
charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't
worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is?
Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's
no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun,
beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she
really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free
charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
one-forty-nine."
"I'll take the special."
"Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?"
"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding
rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is
compatible?"
"Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?"
She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually."
-- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author
-- Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
Keep it short for pithy sake.
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain
You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
You will reach the highest possible point in your business or profession.
You're working under a slight handicap. You happen to be human.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
It was all so different before everything changed.
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
metal objects which are not fastened down.
Today is what happened to yesterday.