Taken on their own, these sayings are cute bits of office humor and so-so sermon filler. As a whole, they seem ominous and doom-laden. You can't win, you can't overcome, so don't even try. That Murphy's Law surged to prominence with Mr. Bloch's books in the 1970s makes things worse. Murphy's Law dug deep into the American psyche-in the place that tells people that when they are about to succeed, fate will jump on them and throw them flat on the canvas.
Life becomes both chaotic and deadly deterministic.
As Melnick's Law says, If at first you do succeed, try not to look too astonished. Thus a society that won't accept that God controls our ups and downs is left imbibing a collection of satirical sayings. With the passing of movie director Edward Dmytryk, the Hollywood Ten is down to just the Hollywood One. In his heyday, Mr. Dmytryk helped invent film noir cinema and worked with the likes of Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, and even Jane Fonda. While he was rising up the ranks at RKO Pictures in 1945 he joined the Communist Party.