Customs and Practices of a Man Called Murph

I find myself frequently blaming a man long dead for the seemingly-chaotic happenstance which plagues, oh, pretty much everybody. I refer, of course, to one Edward Murphy.

For posterity, here is the list of "laws" from which i exhume my nuggets of nonchalance (photo-jacked from a poster in the men's room of Zoe's Double Hex Cafe, Manchester, VT):

No good deed goes unpunished.

Leak-proof seals - will.

Self-starters - will not.

Interchangeable parts - won't.

There is always one more bug.

Nature is a mother.

Don't mess with Mrs. Murphy.

50% of everything is crap.

If you're feeling good, don't worry, you'll get over it.

All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.

Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.

Never eat prunes when you are famished.

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it.

A short cut is the longest distance between two points.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

You will always find something in the last place you look.

The chance of a piece of bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

No one's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

The other line always moves faster.

In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it.

Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.

If you fool around with a thing for very long, you will screw it up.

A $300.00 picture tube will protect a $0.10 fuse by blowing first.

If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Any tool dropped while repairing a car will roll underneath to the exact center.

The repairman will never have seen a model quite like your's before.

When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.

A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

Everybody believes in something - I believe I'll have another drink.

Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will use it.

Everyone has a scheme to get rich quick that will not work.

In every hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and then remains there.

You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck is two doors away.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

When in doubt, mumble, when in trouble, delegate.

Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

A bird in hand is safer than one overhead.

Murphy's Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Everything east of the San Andreas fault will eventually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.

Celibacy is not hereditary.

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

Beauty is only skin deep, ugly goes to the bone.

To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression (Freudian Psychology).

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.

If everything seems to be going wrong, you obviously don't know what the hell is going on.

If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.