"Murphy's Law" (1955)

[Mark A. Mandel]

Wilson reviews:
>>>

In addition to being a serious scholar of baseball, Dickson is a joker and
possibly also a smoker and a midnight toker. [...] _The Official Rules and
Explanations_. This book purports to be, as its subtitle claims, "the
original guide to surviving the Electronic Age with wit, wisdom, and
laughter."

Needless to say, the book is apparently a reference work, but it's
almost totally filled with sometimes real and sometimes fake sayings,
including (pseudo)annotations, on a variety of (pseudo)scientific
topics. These sayings purport to be the rules and explanations that
account for the various permutations of the "Anti-Midas Touch":
everything you touch turns to shit.  Or, as Robert Burns put it, "The
best-laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley."
<<<

Including in quotation:

        The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
        Gang aft agley,

according to http://www.robertburns.org/works/75.shtml

(Do I hear a mention of self-referentiality?)

-- Mark
   (by hand)