Murphy’s Law – Reloaded

Humour is the ingredient that spices up our lives. Even the most difficult situations can be handled with ease if we have a good sense of humour. In fact, the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny". Murphy’s Law is a funny take on life’s silliest, toughest and saddest situations. It is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various areas and before long, many variants had passed and the creativity knew no bounds. In this post I have tried to compile Murphy’s light hearted humour in many of life’s complicated situations. Cheer up and spread happiness with Murphy’s touch.

Murphy's Original Law

If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Murphy's Law

If anything can go wrong -- it will.

Murphy's First Corollary

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Second Corollary

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law

Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy's Constant

Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

The Murphy Philosophy

Smile... tomorrow will be worse.

Conclusions

·         If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong.
Corollary - If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.

·         If several things that could have gone wrong have not gone wrong, it would have been ultimately beneficial for them to have gone wrong.

·         Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

·         If anything can't go wrong, it will anyway.

·         If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

·         If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

More Murphys..

Murphy’s parodies

• Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work.
• The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
• The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
• The line in which you are not standing always moves faster.
• In order to get a personal loan, you must first prove you don't need it.
• Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
• If you want something bad enough, chances are you won't get it.
• Your best game shots always occur when playing alone.
• The worst game shots always occur when playing with someone you are trying to impress.
• When you really need something, it can never be found.  When you don't need it, lays around in plain sight.
• No matter how many times you take care of it before exams, you will invariably have to use the rest room in the middle of it.
• Two wrongs don't make a right. It usually takes three or four.
• When things go from bad to worse, the cycle repeats.
• When you see light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel will cave in.
• If your action has a 50% possibility of being correct, you will be wrong 75% of the time.
• Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• If nobody uses it, there's a reason to it.
• Whether things can go wrong or not, it depends on your frame of reference.
• Corollary: Regardless of your frame of reference, things will go wrong anyway.
• If anything was worth doing, it would've already been done.
  Corollary: Nothing is worth doing.
• You get the most of what you need the least.
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

Murphy’s Law of problems

·         

• The better you know the amount of ill luck that will strike you, the worse you know when this will happen.
• Every solution breeds new problems.
• Behind every little problem there's a larger problem, waiting for the little problem to get out of the way.
• The big catastrophes are made up of smaller ones.
• Everything that could possibly go wrong for anyone else always seems to happen to you.
• Every problem is replaceable with a bigger one.
  
  

Murphy’s laws at work

·         Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

·         Traffic is inversely proportional to how late you are, or are going to be.

·         The complexity and frustration factor is inversely proportional to how much time you have left to finish the work, and how important it is.

·         If you say something, and stake your reputation on it, you will lose your reputation.

·         If authority was mass, stupidity would be gravity.

·         Chaos always wins, because it's better organized.

·        The probability of rain is inversely proportional to the size of the umbrella you carry around with you all day.

·     The harder you work the more people there will be to claim credit except when it backfires.

·    In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and stays there.

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

·         If you think you are doing the right thing, chances are it will back-fire on your face.

·         Great ideas are never remembered and dumb statements are never forgotten.

·         You will find an easy way to do it, after you have finished doing it.

·     The more important it is to go to a website, the greater the chance the server is down.

Murphy’s law of Karate class

• The wimp who made it through the eliminations on luck alone will suddenly turn into Bruce Lee when you're up against him
•  The referee will always be looking the other way when you score.
• After a flawless demonstration, you will trip on your way back to your seat.
• After years of training without a single injury, you will pull a groin muscle the night before your black belt exam.

Murphy’s law of Selective Gravitation

·         A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.

·    A shatterproof object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.

·   A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).

·         A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).

·         If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.

·     A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example) - or into the garbage disposal while it is running.

·         Anything dropped in the bathroom will fall in the toilet.

Murphy’s law of lost and found

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

·         If you are looking for more than one thing, you'll find the most important one last.

·    It is never in the last place you look. It is in the first place you look, but never discovered on the first attempt.

·  After you bought a replacement for something you've lost and searched for everywhere, you'll find the original.

·         Any time you put an item in a "safe place", it will never be seen again.

·         A valuable falling in a hard to reach place will be exactly at the distance of the tip of your fingers.

·       If a valuable falls in a hard to reach place at a distance shorter than the tip of your finger, as soon as you try to reach it you'll push it to that distance.

·         The file you are looking for is always at the bottom of the largest pile.

Murphy’s law of repair and maintenance

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

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

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

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

·         Garbage abhors a vacuum. It will grow to fill available space.
Corollary: The more space you have, the more junk you'll have.

·         The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that your pet will throw up on it.

Murphy’s Law of stupidity

·         Stupidity is the fundamental driving force of the Universe, which explains why stupid people always go wrong.

·         You cant reason with the stupid.

·         Clemens' Law of stupidity
In any given situation, people will act so as to display the maximum possible amount of stupidity for that situation.
Clemens' Law short form - People are stupid.

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

Murphy’s law of dressing up

·         The cost of the hair do is directly related to the strength of the wind.

·         When you wear new shoes for the first time, everyone will step on them.

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

And finally, corollaries on Murphy’s law

• If a Murphy law is tried to be used to have a desired outcome, the law will backfire.
• If you apply Murphy's Law, it will no longer be applicable.
• No matter how perfect things are made to appear, Murphy's law will take effect and screw it up.

Cheer up, the worst is yet to come...