Fortune Cookie Cartridge

Recently, I bought a magical new toner cartridge for our home printer.  After installation, the printer produced a bizarre test page.  Upon this page were printed these random Observations, Laws, Constants, Corollaries and Rules.  Where they came from, gremlins only know.  But as I read them, I chuckled--and thanked the gremlins.  After reading them, you just might do the same.

Laugh on.

  

Ettore's Observation: "The other line moves faster.  This applies to all lines--bank, supermarket, tollbooth, customs and so on.  And don't try to change lines.  The other line--the one you were in originally--will then move faster."

Boren's First Law: "When in doubt, mumble."

Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: "Murphy was an optimist."

The First Corollary to Murphy's Law: "Anything that is to go wrong will do so at the worst possible moment."

The Unspeakable Law: "As soon as you mention something, if it's good, it goes away; if it's bad, it happens."

Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations: "Negative expectations yield negative results.  Positive expectations yield negative results."

Howe's Law: "Every man has a scheme which will not work."

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: "Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can."

Skinner's Constant: "The quantity which must be multiplied by, divided by, added to or subtracted from the answer you get to give the answer you should have got."

Law of Selective Gravity: "An object will fall so as to do the most damage."

Jenning's Corollary: "The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet."

Barth's Distinction: "There are two types of people: those who categorize people into two types and those who do not."

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: "The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90%."

Farber's Rule: "Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows."