Additionally, if you’re the only car on the road, the light will be red in your direction.
The only day they can deliver is the only day you can’t be in.
The stronger the assurance that they will deliver on the day you take off work, the less likely it is to happen.
Out of 9 hours constant vigil on your only possible day off work, the delivery man will call during the 60 seconds you weren’t able to answer the door. (He’ll leave behind a tatty card with a neatly typed message blaming you for not being in, and with all the vital info about how to put this right in a handwritten scrawl which hieroglyphics experts would find baffling.)
The day the computer develops a seriously scary lose-all-vital-data malfunction = duration of maintenance contract + 1.
If you know you should turn either left or right, you will always guess wrong – even if you take this law into account.
Universal law of government: no matter who gets elected, tax UP, services DOWN.
The 17 forms you have filled in are the ones they don’t really need; the only one they really need is the one they never sent, you’ve never seen, and wouldn’t know how to fill in anyway.
On any form, the space provided will be inversely proportional to the space you need. ‘Zipcode’ gets acres of white space. ‘Complete description of your claim’ gets one third of a narrow line.
Universal law of the teaching profession: when you pass the exam, it’s because the teacher did such a good job teaching you; when you fail it’s because you’re a lazy, ignorant, time-wasting dork.
Guitar strings never break. Unless this is seriously inconvenient and embarassing.
Every desk becomes infested with a random scattering of pens and pencils from you-don’t-know-where, except when you actually and urgently need a pen or pencil. At this point, they simply vanish.
The only cheque book stub on which you didn’t write anything is the only one your accountant and the tax man actually needs to know about.
In any given audience, the man with the biggest, fattest head will be allocated the seat directly in front of the smallest person. Never the other way round.
When you want to find something interesting to read, you can’t. Yet when you are going through your stuff to chuck out all the rubbish, every piece of newspaper or magazine you pick up contains reams of gripping, fascinating material that command your attention.
The person in front of you at the ATM is ten times slower than you at actually getting money out of it. Some of them take an hour.
Sorry I didn’t read every response yet so hopefully nobody said this but when driving everytime you are in a hurry you hit every red light but when you need a red light so you can do something every light is green.
Never - NEVER - put anything in a “safe place”. You will always forget where it is.
Trust me …
nine month’s after that is twice as bad … :eek:
(How can something so cute create something that horrible???)
The month you decide to give your body a break from hormones and quit birth control is the month before you meet someone new.
Speaking of Murphy’s Law, it occured to me whilst watching my Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 2 that, in the world of animated cartoons, Murphy’s Law is a real, true, causal, actual, explanatory law of nature. Why did the rock fall on the exact spot where the coyote was standing? What caused the lighted stick of dynamite to appear? Why did the shack full of explosives happen to be in the right place at the wrong time? Because in cartoons, things happen so as to cause the maximum possible pain, suffering, and humiliation.
And in this context, Murphy’s Law for Cartoons is really just a corollary of another law: Things happen the way they do because that’s what’s funny. (“Roger Rabbit’s Rule”?)
In fact it’s a bit deeper than that in real life…
As the buddha said, “Life is Suffering”.
This being the case, everything the universe can do to increase your suffering, it will… hence Murphy’s Law itself. If things go wrong, you suffer. Through suffering, you grow. The universe, therefore, wants you to suffer.
So if, like Batman himself, you are prepared for whatever might go wrong, the universe will go through amazing contortions in order to make SOMETHING go wrong.
Suffering is funny… especially when it’s happening to someone else.
Hence, Phnord’s Corollary: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, especially if it’s funnier that way. Usually to whomever is watching at the time.
This also holds true if you’re trying to look at a map or fill out a bank deposit form. I once got eight green lights while I was waiting for a red light to read something.
This corrolary might be unique to Austin-whenever you need to read a street sign, it will be missing, faded, so poorly lit you can’t read it, or all three. The mildly interesting but useless signs that let you know what creek watershed you’re in will be readable at all times.
Okay, in MA, all signs are missing or unreadable.
This is my father’s corollary, but I’ve found it to be true: When you are looking for n number of screws, you will find n-1 of innumerable types.
Oh, and the only classes that fit your schedule are the only ones that are closed or have some sort of random cap.
This is one we have at work:
Anything written that can be misinterpreted, will be misinterpreted - by at least 10% of the people reading it.
the first time you read what seems to be an insane interpretation you think " Wow, how could someone possibly think it means that?" then it comes up again, and again…kids are weird.
Two I’ve come up with myself:
The Multi-tool Rule: When using a tool with multiple attachments, the right one is never in place when you pick up the tool.
The Tether Tenet: When walking a dog on a leash, the dog will always walk around the other side of any obstacle.
Corollary: Don’t try to outsmart the dog and go around the obstacle yourself - the dog will just double-back.
Just an observation:
Murphy is vindictive. Never try to thwart him, just take your lumps and move on…
Corollary to this: whenever you convince the maintenance man that an appliance (especially a computer) absolutely won’t perform a task, it will do it perfectly in their presence.
And then f*** up again 5 minutes after they leave.
(It is somewhat comforting to know that it just isn’t me that this happens to. To put it another way - OK, I’m paranoid, but they really are out to get me.)
If there are only two programs worth watching on TV during the week, they will be on opposite each other.
The cuter the date, the worse your diarrhea’s going to be.
Yeah…I hate my bowels…
All Great Rules come in sets of Three.
The Laws of Thermodynamics
Euler’s Laws
Asimov’s Laws of Robotics
Clarke’s Laws
Kepler’s Laws
etc.
I call this Cal Meacham’s Third Law
(I have thought of the other two yet.)
Murphy’s Laws of Public Swimming Baths:
-
After leaving the house, you will have to return at least once to fetch the keys/towels/underwear/money you left behind the first time.
-
Upon arrival at the pool, 1 time out of 3 it will be closed for maintenance/“water aerobics”/“pensioners only hour” or some other restriction.
Corollary: If the pool is open, there will be nowhere to park. -
If you have small children with you, at least one of them will have to accompany you into the “wrong sex” changing room.
Corollary: Once inside, they will proceed to loudly point out any slight abnormality in the bodies of other changers.
Corollary to the corollary: The more intimate/embarassing the abnormality, the louder the child’s voice. -
You will not have the right change for the locker.
Corollary: If you foresaw this and brought a selection of coins, the lockers will be of the type whereby you purchase a token from the receptionist - who will be on their lunch break. -
In the water, when you are not looking directly at them, your children will splash everyone else in a 20 metre radius.
Corollary: When you are looking directly at them, they will splash you in the eyes. -
If you manage to get a couple of quick lengths in, you will somehow ingest enough chlorine to kill a small dog.
Corollary: When swimming the crawl, your turning to breathe will neatly coincide with the tidal wave from the person in the next lane doing the butterfly.
Corollary: If you manage to swim a length without opening your mouth, the chlorine will find its way in through your nose and/or ears. -
When swimming breaststroke, you will somehow be in synch with the person in the next lane, so that you cannot fully extend your arms without groping them.
-
When doing backstroke, you will be unaware of swimming across 3 lanes and slapping someone else’s kid until you hit your head on the wall of the pool.
-
The shower will be either too hot or too cold.
Corollary: If it is about right, it won’t stay on for more than 2 seconds without re-pressing the button. -
You will leave with fewer socks than you arrived with.
-
No matter how carefully you change, your shoelaces will get wet.
Corollary: If they somehow stay dry, you will step in a large puddle on your way out.
Any group of asshats who are friends with each other will contain one (1) nice person. I will meet this person, and we will become friends. He will then begin to invite me to hang out with him and his buddies, who are, to a man, complete and utter asshats. I am then left to decide the best course of action. At the time of this post, I am involved in no less than five seperate instances of this occurrence. The number has been higher in the past.
If there is only one bug in your program or project, your boss/teacher will do whatever it takes to make that bug visible. (I’ve run into this one on both sides of the fence.)
If you think things can’t get worse, you haven’t thought the situation through.
On an airplance, the pilot will head for the nearest air pocket as soon as you are served your meal. Especially true for wine. (Now obsolete, since no more meals.)
And: the laws of luck, we developed in college. This needs a math character set …
Sigma (luck) = 0. The amount of luck you have in your life is 0.
The surface integral of luck around a room = 0. In other words, if your roommate gets lucky, you can forget it.
Luck = 1 / deserving quotient.
And one my friend came up with, which I don’t quite buy
Sigma (luck) over a finite interval < 0.