Laws, Corollaries and Principles of Everyday Life

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m sure we’ve done this before but I think it’s time for a new one.

We are all familiar with Murphy’s Law and maybe Cole’s Law (shredded cabbage) but there are others that pop up in everyday life. Like the Queue* Law, no matter which line you pick it will be the slowest.

*Queue sounds much cooler than line.

I discovered a new one I shall call The Principle of Dropped Laundry Items.
This decrees that should you drop an item while transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer it will immediately turn invisible until it is sufficiently moldy to once again be seen by the human eye.

What are your laws?

2

The law of Laundry Basket Incompatibility. No matter which laundry basket you buy, the dryer door will not swing open over it. The basket will always be 1/4" too tall.

3

The Inverse Law of Distance and Punctuality. The probability that you would be late for a meeting increases in proportion to how close you stay to the meeting place.

4

The Law of Possibility - just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. This starts to make more sense as you get older. :slight_smile:

5

Don’t forget Murphy’s Theorem, which attempts to explain the underlying principle of the observed events covered by Murphy’s Law: “The Universe tends towards the perverse.”

6

I’ve noticed two other laws relating to punctuality;

  1. When you give yourself lots of extra time to get someplace on time all sorts of crap will happen to make you late. Flat tires, traffic jams, getting lost, you name it.

  2. When you only give yourself enough time to get somewhere and don’t allow for other events, you will hit every single red light and get behind every car traveling 10 miles under the speed limit.

There is some sort of magic number regarding how much time to give yourself to get to an appointment without having these things happen but I haven’t found it yet.

7

The Law of Bathroom Cleanliness: The probability that a person will wash his or her hands after going to the bathroom is inversely proportional to his or her position in the company.

Simply stated: Don’t follow the the company president through the buffet line.

8

Looey’s Housecat Theorem:

The density of the average housecat is inversely proportional to the amount of ambient light in the room. The end result of this is that a 15-pound cat (daytime weight) actually weighs something similar to an anvil once it has fallen asleep on your feet in the middle of the night.

Corollary: Such “anvilized” felines are also found to be magnetically drawn back to their original location, even when removed (by means of cranes and winches) repeatedly.

9

The Law of Bug Awareness: If you are randomly looking through your source code and find a previously-unnoticed problem in the code, you have exactly two weeks before that very bug will become critical for your most-important client.

10

There are two kinds of dirt -
[ul][li]White dirt, which is attracted to dark clothing, and[/li][li]Black dirt, which is attracted to light clothing.[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan

11

Probably been said before. The 50/50/90 rule. If you have a 50 percent chance of getting something correct, 90 percent of the time you will be wrong.

12

Two lawsof physics: Constants aren’t; variables don’t.

General Rule of Life: Nobody did because nobody does.

13

McDonald’s Law: Regardless of the time of day or night, if you use the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant, you will invariably be stuck behind a van or SUV who is ordering for 14 people. Those 14 people will each have different burger preferences (no pickles, extra ketchup, etc.) directly proportional to how much of a hurry you are in.

14

One more. Colgate’s Rule: You will run out of bath soap, toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo all at the exact same time. When you purchase these items next time at the grocery store, everyone will think you just discovered personal hygiene for the first time.

15

This is incorrect. If you give yourself a good bit of extra time to get there, everything will go far smoother than you planned for. This means that you’ll sit around forever waiting for your friends, who will no doubt arrive late.

The Law of Socks: If you buy three non-identical pairs of socks, you will lose three non-identical socks within a week. If you buy three identical pairs of socks, you will lose five socks within a week.

16

The Rags to Riches Rule - When you run out of something (toothpaste, tomato sauce, laundry detergent) you will buy that item each of the next 6 times you go shopping because you remember you ran out, thereby filling your closets with stuff that you will then overbuy the next time you run out.

Yes, I do have 3 unopened bottles of fabric softener in the laundry room…

17

I have no room in my fridge because it’s filled with jars of pickled peppers.

18

Extension to Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.

19

And O’Toole’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law:

Murphy was an optimist.

20

I can’t remember if I heard this one before, or if it’s original to me. If we can’t find the original, I’ll call this Torque’s Law:

An unexpected gift of money is immediately equaled by an unexpected expense.

And let’s not forget Gaudere’s Law: if you post to correct someone else’s spelling or grammar mistake, your post will also contain a mistake.