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THE DR. SUESS TECHINICAL MANUAL
Bits
Bytes Chips Clocks
Bits in bytes on chips in box.
Bytes with bits and chips with clocks.
Chips in box on ether-docks.
Chips with bits come. Chips with bytes come.
Chips with bits and bytes and clocks come.
Look, sir. Look,
sir. read the book, sir.
Let's do tricks with bits and bytes, sir.
Let's do tricks with chips and clocks, sir.
First,
I'll make a quick trick bit stack.
Then I'll make a quick trick byte stack.
You can make a quick trick chip stack.
You can make a quick trick clock stack.
And here's a new trick on the scene.
Bits in bytes for your machine.
Bytes in words to fill your screen.
Now we come to ticks and tocks, sir.
Try to say this by the clock, sir.
Clocks on chips tick.
Clocks on chips tock.
Eight byte bits tick.
Eight bit bytes tock.
Clocks on
chips with eight bit bytes tick.
Chips with clocks and eight byte bits tock.
Here's an easy game to play.
Here's
an easy thing to say....
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very
last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error
to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icons put your window
in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's
gonna crash!
You can't say this? What a shame, sir!
We'll find you another game, sir.
If the label on
your cable on the gable at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets
want to tunnel to another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.
And your screen is
all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well
reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's
getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,
The you have to flash your memory
and you'll want to RAM your ROM,
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!
English Is A Crazy Language
Let's face it -- English is a crazy
language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented
in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for
granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose,
2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend,
that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but
one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?
Sometimes I think all the English
speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at
a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook
and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold
as hell another.
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen
a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was
combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are
all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which
an alarm clock goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity
of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when
the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end
it.
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