Graham's Trivia Treasure Trove

Principles of Life

• For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
• He who hesitates is probably right.
• The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
• The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
• If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• Psychiatrists say that 1 out of 4 people are mentally ill. Check 3 friends. If they're OK, you're it.
• It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
• The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
• It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
• Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
• There are only two rules for achieving anything:
      1. Get started
      2. Keep going

Anti-Motivational Slogans

• Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.
• Every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people each year who try to find it.
• It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
• Mediocrity - it takes a lot less time, and most people won't notice the difference until its too late.
• If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.
• If we don't take care of the customers, maybe they'll stop bugging us.
• Not all pain is gain.

Sayings of Dilbert

• A pat on the back is only a few centimetres from a kick in the butt.
• Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
• It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
• After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
• The more crap you put up with, the more crap you're going to get.
• You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
• Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
• When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
• If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a fool about it.
• There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
• Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
• Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
• Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
• Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he/she is supposed to be doing.
• Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
• If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
• You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
• People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
• If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
• At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
• When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
• Following the rules will not get the job done.
• Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
• When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily be reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
• No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
• The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.

Miscellaneous Fascinating (but useless) Facts

• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
• The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was called "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
• If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
• The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified.
• Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
• Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
• The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
• Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
• The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life."
• Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their radio's newscast about the wreck.
• In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Incredible Human Facts

• The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
• If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.
• Babies are born without knee caps.They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
• If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough energy is produced to create an atomic bomb.
• The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet out of the body.
• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
• On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
• Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
• Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.

Amazing Animal Facts

• A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
• Humans, dolphins, and bonobonos (a subspecies of chimpanzee) are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
• The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
• A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
• A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
• Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
• Camel's milk does not curdle.
• All porcupines float in water.
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $0.10 from the town.
• When opossums are playing 'possum', they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
• A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
• Armadillos have four babies at a time and they are always all the same sex.
• Armadillos are the only animals besides humans that can get leprosy.
• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
• The ant can lift 50 times its own weight and pull 30 times its own weight.
• Polar bears are left handed.
• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds, that's more than any other animal.
• The flea can jump 350 times its body length. That's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
• The giraffe has a black tongue that is 14 inches long and no vocal cords.
• Butterflies taste with their feet.
• Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Exciting Word Facts

• The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
• No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
• A group of unicorns is called a blessing. Twelve or more cows are known as a "flink." A group of frogs is called an army. A group of rhinos is called a crash. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A group of whales is called a pod. A group of ravens is called a murder. A group of officers is called a mess. A group of larks is called an exaltation. A group of owls is called a parliament.
• "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
• The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the largest anagrams.
• An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
• The only nations whose names begin with "A", but don't end in "A" are Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.
• The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

Meanings

• The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
• The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bedframe. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep.
• "Three dog night" (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing.
• The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
• The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "the king is dead".
• Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
• The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside, they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

34 Ways to Annoy People

1. Leave the photocopy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
2. Sit in your yard pointing a hair drier at passing cars to see if they slow down.
3. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go."
4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it with your pen while talking to others.
5. Sing along at the opera.
6. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."
7. Reply to everything someone says with that's what YOU think.
8. Practice making fax and modem noises.
9. Highlight irrelevant material in scientific papers and forward them to your boss.
10. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
11. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
12. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears.
13. Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the cartridge across the room.
14. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
15. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."
16. Staple papers in the middle of the page.
17. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.
18. Honk and wave to strangers.
19. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints by the cash register.
20. TYPE ONLY IN UPPER-CASE.
21. type only in lowercase.
22. don t use any punctuation either
23. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and re-route whole streets.
24. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times: "Do you hear that? What? Never mind, it's gone now."
25. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
26. Try playing the William Tell Overture (The Lone Ranger Theme) by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce, "no, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.
27. Ask people what gender they are.
28. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
29. In the memo field of all your cheques, write "for sensual massage."
30. Stomp on little plastic sauce packets.
31. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
32. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble the answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."
33. Tell your friends 4 days prior, that you can't attend their party because you're not in the mood.
34. Send this list to everyone in your email address book even if they sent it to you or ask you not to send things like this.

Seinfeldisms (by Jerry Seinfeld)

• Why isn't there mouse-flavoured cat food?
• Why do they report power outages on TV?
• Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
• Why is bra singular and panties plural?
• Can you be a closet claustrophobic?
• When it rains, why don't sheep shrink?
• Why is the word abbreviation so long?
• Is it possible to be totally partial?
• What's another word for thesaurus?
• If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?
• If the funeral procession is at night, do folks drive with their lights off?
• When companies ship Styrofoam, what do they pack it in?
• If you're cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?
• If the cops arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
• Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?
• Do cemetery workers prefer the graveyard shift?
• What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?
• If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
• If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?
• Instead of talking to your plants, if you yelled at them would they still grow only to be troubled and insecure?
• Is there another word for synonym?
• Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"?
• When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs?
• When you open a bag of cotton balls, is the top one meant to be thrown away?
• Can fat people go skinny-dipping?
• Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all"?

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