There I was innocently browsing through a post by phil Haaak, when I accidentally clicked through an off-the-cuff incidental link he'd included along the way.  Lo and behold I found myself at the blog of the esteemed Jeffrey Friedl (the guy who wrote the book on regexes) reading a post on the origins of the gag about "now, you have two problems".

Geekish humour, I suppose, but very entertaining.

BTW - subscribed, even though there's barely a regex in sight.