Other

"[The aardvark's tongue] is as long as your arm, but sticky, flexible, and covered in panic-stricken termites...." -- Animal Planet commentator

"Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2. Advising the President. 3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin." -- David Letterman

"Man, it's hot out there" < shrug > "It's kinda nice." "If you're practicing for the afterlife." -- two guys overheard in an elevator in St. Louis

"You are now officially registered as a participant in this year's NaNoWriMo. This means many things. Firstly, it means that your name has been etched onto the Great List of NaNo 2002 authors forever. Backing out of the challenge now will bring great shame to your immediate family, and will likely embarrass at least one or two of your cousins. So you're in for the duration."" -- NaNoReMo website

"This software is provided 'as-is', without any expressed or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Translation: This program's been tested by thousands of users, but in the rare event that you happen to discover a new bug that blows up your computer and burns your house down, we're not responsible." -- livejournal disclaimer

"A 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. A 'great' landing is one after which they can use the plane again." -- fromAustralian Aviation Magazine

"The word 'choreography' comes from the Greek for 'The gods want to see how much pain your body can stand." -- Gina Gershon on the Tonys

"Are you people nuts? If you didn't show up, I wouldn't have to!" -- priest at midnight mass

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." -- Winston Churchill

"We hope you enjoy yourself here more than you ever have at any internet awards show, but since it's Yahoo, we doubt that will happen." -- Rosie the Bug

Con Rule of Panels: When the number of the people on the panel is the same as the number of people in the audience, move the panel to the bar.

"The enemy is whoever's going to get you killed -- no matter which side he's on." -- Joseph Heller

"...the purpose of the Academie Francaise is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly argued decisions that the French gaily ignore." -- Steven Pinker

"Let's just say that when Christians pray, they begin their prayer with 'Our Father, who art in Heaven'. When Unitarians pray, we begin our prayer with 'To Whom It May Concern.' I think that really says a lot...."-- Adlai Stephenson

"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!" --Brilliant

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot."

"We should take from the past its fire and not its ashes." -- Jean Juares

"God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh." -- Voltaire

"Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette." -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354

"I quit a job at IBM to do this, and my parents are very happy about that. They keep calling Georgia Tech to request a refund." -- Jeff Foxworthy

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." -- Clive James

"For the record, we never broke up. We just took a 14-year vacation." -- the Eagles

"Feel free to keep the hate mail forthcoming. There's nothing like a good bomb threat to spark the creative flame." -- Rosie (who deserved every threat)

"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." -- Emo Phillips

"Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"The thing I don't get about these ridiculous sequels is that a sequel should follow the basic mathematical equation: "To answer all those unanswered questions you had after watching" + original movie title. I didn't HAVE any questions after watching the first Highlander. Bad guy died, good guy fell in love, Queen sang over the credits, end of story. Same with Grease. Everybody graduated. What sort of questions am I supposed to ask after that? "What was Kinickie's major in college?" Everybody KNOWS Kinickie didn't go to college, he went to Babylon Five. See? No need for a sequel." -- Troll Princess

"A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing."-- Samuel Butler

"Y'know, sometimes I go off into my own world, but that's okay because they know me there." -- Joel Hodson

"I climbed higher in the tree, until I was above the fence. I sat there for a while, watching nothing happen. . . . This is why I love surveillance. Nothing ever happens. Then you have to go to the bathroom and you miss a double homicide." -- Stephanie Plum

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth." -- Nero Wolfe

"When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy." -- Dave Barry

"Q. Where do you get your ideas?"
"A. England. They're delivered by courier. You should see the catalog - it's mind-boggling. Shipping and handling will bleed you dry though, and I've had a few ideas that arrived somewhat worse for wear. Sadly, they don't take returns." -- Revely, on how she gets ideas for fanfic

"I was playing poker the other night. With Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." -- Steven Wright

"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?" -- Kelvin Throop III

"There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'" -- Dave Barry

"One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted." -- Thomas B. Reed

"Then again, those big ol' cockroaches that wander around like they own the place...those guys have to go. I watched a cleaning lady attack one with a broom last year. Thing took five minutes to die, and I swear I heard it scream "I will be avenged!"" -- Hutch, overheard by Kielle on the Rant & Rave

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent." -- R. Emerson

"But it wasn't until he began having a constant mental dialogue with her that he realized the truth-- He was spellbound. She had him tucked neatly under her precious little thumb, so utterly taken that if he wouldn't quite jump off a cliff the instant she asked, he would definitely hold negotiations with her over the specifics." -- Sharkbait

"And I don't mean little, cute, charlotte-thinks-I'm-a-swell-pig spiders. They ranged from "getting up stunned and scurrying away" size (I was using rolled up Wizard mag) to "Oh my god, whose ugly child?" size. These aren't normal spiders. One gave me the finger as it dashed behind the couch. And they all have this psycho death wish. They drop from the ceiling onto my keyboard, swing from bungee cords attached to their asses over my dining room table, and sit in wait in my empty coffee cups. I cannot tell you how revolting it is to pour a cup of java to find some eight-legger frantically hand-signing, "Throw me a raft, dumbass."" -- Tangletoy

"Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail." -- Charles Dickens

"Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word fear, a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies." -- 2nd place, 2000 Bulwer-Lytton Worst First Line Awards

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence." -- H. L. Mencken

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."" -- Isaac Asimov

"Verily and forsooth. In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?"
"Beats me, but I thought it made good copy." -- Goodgulf and Frito, "Bored of the Rings" [Harvard Lampoon]

"Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up." -- Chicago Reader, 4/22/83

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down." -- no idea, but isn't it cool?

"Aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement.
Afterism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late." -- James Alexander Thom

"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering." -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado"

"Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation." -- Plunderer's Theme (to 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius')

"Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash." -- Unknown

"I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease."
"That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress." -- Gladstone and Disraeli (apocr.)

"The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!" -- Ogden Nash

"I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers." -- A Bit of Fry and Laurie

"The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": 1. fighting; 2. fleeing; 3. feeding; and 4. mating." -- Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course

The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"

""Green Eggs and Hamlet" -- Would you kill him in his bed? Thrust a dagger through his head? I would not, could not, kill the King. I could not do that evil thing. I would not wed this girl, you see. Now get her to a nunnery." -- Robin Parry

"Perhaps it was the fact that I addressed it to The Future [Perri] Smith-Stankow that has something to do with it.... I am, of course, kidding. It was addressed to That Chick I'm Stalking in Chicago." -- George, starting my day off *right*! :P

"... And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man." -- A. E. Housman

"No, 'Eureka' is Greek for 'This bath is too hot.'" -- Dr. Who

"I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different." -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)

"After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more advanced than the lichen family." -- Dave Barry

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo." -- ???

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." -- Elizabeth Taylor

"Five days a week my body is a temple; the other two, it's an amusement park." -- Jerry Doyle

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain

"All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands." -- Saint Patrick

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." -- Will Durant

"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing." -- Dick Brandon

"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?" -- Dick Cavett

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." -- A. Whitney Brown

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
"Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front? -- Calvin and Hobbes

"... 'Bother!' said Pooh as he centered the cross hairs on Tigger." -- stolen from a .sig

"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities; Truth isn't." -- Mark Twain

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress." -- Godwin's Law

"I feel a great disturbance on the Net...as if millions of filkers had blown coffee through their noses in laughter, and were suddenly silenced..." -- Peter Schorn, rec.music.filk

"Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely." -- Hesketh Pearson

"Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;
take honour from me, and my life is done." -- Shakespeare

"But I must hold and I must say where this freedom ends:
Their right to swing their faith must stop where my soul begins." -- ErolB1, alt.filk

"Filkers sing of spaceships and stars, magic and holy quests
Harmony may lack a bit, but hey, we take requests." -- Mark Horning

"Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." -- G. Harry Stine

"Love is simply the recognition of someone or something by the soul." -- alt.callahans

"They've already tried putting a million monkeys in front of typewriters -- and believe me, Usenet is *NOT* Shakespeare." -- ??

"If you want to see something funny, go where cops hang out, and watch them fight over the check. Interesting watching the domination/submission go back and forth until someone grabs the check." -- Bob the Cop, alt.callahans

"When in doubt, deny all terms and definitions." -- Calvin

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things that I can,
And the Wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill because they pissed me off." -- The Serenity Prayer (Revised)

"Caffeine Free Diet Mountain Dew(tm) is an abominition of no conceivable utility or desirability. Lacking the phosphoric acid present in the colas, you can't even strip paint or remove rust with it. It's a near perfect waste of resources." -- Polymath

"What's the difference between an enthusiast and someone who doesn't like other people to play with his toys?"
"Enthusiasts are generally less mature." -- 'Walnut Cove'

"She who has the biggest sword gets to be the biggest bitch." -- Kymberli Morris

"Pain is my middle name. Avoid is my first." -- TJ Glenn

"I am mad north-north-west;
when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." -- Hamlet

"Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels but they live like men." -- Dr Samuel Johnson

"Stop steamin' up my tail!" -- Bugs Bunny

Obi-wan on table manners: "Use the fork, luke."

"It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air -- there's the rub, the task." -- Virgil

"we are currently in the midst of a reroute hold your horses your girlfriends and loose items. we are not responsible for lost glasses or bags." -- Deadrange on undernet.org

"Both feet flat, the game is won.
They think I lost, I think I won." -- Maya Angelou, 'Harlem Hopscotch'

"But WHY? I mean, were they punishing the characters for something? Or punishing the audience for paying attention?"
"My son, you want me to fathom the thinking of television executives? I'm only a god." -- "Miserable Depressing Endings", Rache

"But it isn't easy," said Pooh. "Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get *you*. And all you can do is to go where they can find you." -- The House at Pooh Corner

"If she be-eth fair as the summer days, kind as the milk from thy mother's breast, and pure as the morning sun, then thou art buggered, for thou standeth not a chance, my son." -- Gospel according to Ian Foster, Untold-L

"The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one
Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun.
The mind had a thousand eyes and the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done." -- Francis William Bourdillon

"A Bird in the Bush be-eth fine, so long as her boyfriend be-eth smaller than thou." -- Gospel according to Ian Foster, Untold-L

"With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress." -- Ransom K. Ferm

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." -- George Carlin

"Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world." -- Dave Barry

"A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit." -- In the August 1993 issue of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of preventive maintenance

"I'm part of one of the longest-running slumber parties in history." -- member, SLAE&BS

"Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is." -- Francis Bacon

"We could make an 'airheads are us' mailing list, but no one would post because they couldn't remember the list address." -- Beth, DDEB2

"The simplest way to stop a flamewar is to breathe deeply, swallow your bile and just LET an idiot have the last word." -- Daniel Walker

"I wish there was a knob on the tv so you could turn up the intelligence. They got one marked brightness, but it don't work." -- Gallagher

"But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one" -- Tigger

"My name's Bond, James Bond. I'm the world's authority on giving up smoking. I do it constantly. You're lucky I happened to be handy" - James Bond, from Ian Fleming's Thunderball

"A mother spends the first twenty years of her son's life helping him to grow up. He spends the rest of it trying to convince her he has." -- John Cleese.

"You killed a WHAT?!?" -- some guy to St. George

"What do we think of sex on television? Frankly, I think it's a pain. For one thing, the cable box gets wedged into your back and gets real uncomfortable...." -- Peter David

"A man died. He seemed like a good man, though I did not know him."
"Don Quixote is not dead, Sancho. Believe."
"But, Aldonza..."
"My name is Dulcinea." -- Dulcinea and Sancho

"And the child looked at the Phoenix, saw that it was new and renewed from the ashes of its rebirth, and said, "Neat, can you do any other tricks?" -- Zaxxon

"Let those who have failed take courage;
Tho' the enemy seems to have won,
Tho' his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrong
the battle is not yet done;
For, as sure as the morning follows
the darkest hour of the night,
No question is ever settled
until it is settled right." -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 450 Mhz drive, 200 Meg of RAM, 1500 Meg of disk storage, screen resolution of 1024 X 1024 pixels, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question the computer community asks?
"Is it PC compatible?" -- anonymous

"Come away, oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand." -- W.W. Yeats

"Somewhere, for everyone, there is that person, who, inside their mind, carries the memories of a person's soul so that they might never be forgotten, and in that, we are all immortal." -- Julie Randolph

"Never anger a bard, for you are silly and would make a funny song." -- anonymous

"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." -- Hawk, alt.comics.fanfiction

"But of course, if you strap buttered toast to the back of a cat and then drop it, it will float indefinitely." - from THIS IS TRUE

"That is not dead, Which can eternal lie
And with strange eons even death may die." -- ???

"I've seen sae mony changefu' years, on earth I am a stranger grown;
I wander in the ways o' men, alike unknowing and unknown.'"

"O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, to see oursel's as others see us!'" -- both Robert Burns

"Only where love and need are one, and work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever truly done for heaven and the future's sakes." -- Robert Frost

"Thus conscience doth makes cowards of us all" -- Hamlet

"The enemy of my enemy is my target." -- Richard Darwin

"I'll get it! I'll get it! Where is it?!" -- random person, random con

"I PKZipped the universe, and I can't remember the password!" - God

"Liposuction. . . they can suck the fat out of one part of your body and put it in another part. I think that's wrong. I want them to suck the fat out of my body, and put it in Cindy Crawford's." -- Rita Rudner

"I wonder if anyone ever yells at the Pope. Do they ever say, "I am so tired of your holier-than-thou attitude!" -- Rita

"There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste." -- Bertolt Brecht

C> (A)bort (R)etry (I)nfluence with large hammer -- my favorite command line.

"In the Middle Ages we have art for God's sake,
in the Renaissance we have art for man's sake,
in the nineteenth century we have art for art's sake,
and in the twentieth century we have no art, for God's sake." -- random .sig

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack conviction,
While the worst are full of passionate intensity." -- Yeats

"The laws of reality are immutable, unless you buy the supplementary rules."
"It's been my experience that most manuals -- for anything -- are best viewed as existensial works of science fiction/fantasy writing. It's obvious, after all, that they're not describing anything that happens in this particular dimensional reality. When you consider the fact that the manuals are intended to apply not to our world, but to one of the author's imagination, you realize that they are in fact 100% correct with regard to the world they describe. Even when they are internally inconsistent. I have shelves of manuals here which, when viewed in the proper context, rival anything written by any SF/fantasy author ever published." -- Tom Harrington

"Please let me know if/when the `damn' becomes an SI unit."
"The damn is defined as the pain from a single stubbed toe when struck by a 1 kilogram mass moving at 1 metre/sec. Thus a mosquito bite is a millidamn. A tax audit is a kilodamn. Living next to a missile silo during a nuclear attack is a gigadamn." -- rec.arts.sf.science

"Some of you may not be aware that Julie Andrews is a psychic. She has set up shop somewhere in the wilds of Hollywood. Her particular angle is to determine one's future by smelling their breath. The sign in her window reads -- SUPER CALIFORNIA MYSTIC, EXPERT HALITOSIS" -- Thruster, alt.callahans

"How come nobody ever WARNS me when we're gonna have a surprise attack?" -- Big Al

"SJ quickly rips off his right shoe and attempts to contact CONTROL ... then remembers, belatedly, that he's currently wearing honest sneakers and now has a "swoosh" imprinted on the side of his face." -- Sailor Jim, alt. callahans

"Fan-fic
all alone in the moonlight
i'm in search of the next line
now i've got writers block
in my dorm room, my failures all collect at my feet
and my roomate, hates my guts..." -- Mary Henry

"No time for words, but ponder this while choking on your blood: old swordsmen get to be that way by being *very* good." -- Michael Longcor

"It has been said that uttering a perfect pun results in the quick death of the perpetrator. The only reason I am still alive is that there is no one here who would allow me the satisfaction of going to the grave knowing that I've performed a perfect pun." -- ???

"If I flew, could I get to you
Could I cross to the other side
Would I change, become strange
Would I be real in your eyes?
Am I real enough for you to take the time
To put down your important life
Am I real enough to forget you're not alone
've been waiting by your side" -- Talos

"DOS Computers manufactured by companies such as IBM, Compaq, Tandy, and millions of others are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use wordwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form."" -- New York Times

"Henry IV : I can call spirits from the vasty deep!
Hotspur: Well, so can I, and so can any man. But tell me this: Will they come when you call them?"
""We fight not in the expectation of victory, but in order to keep something alive." -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"