ESR's fortune.pl redone in python - request for critique

[Mel Wilson]

In article <c4eflk$l9e$07$1 at news.t-online.com>,
Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> wrote:
>Yes, Mel's approach is the least scalable (it keeps the whole file),

   I have even more sympathy now (I had quite a bit before)
for the poster who asked whether Python had a built-in way
to read a file up to an arbitrarily-chosen delimiter.
(Subject: Can python read up to where a certain pattern is matched?)

        Regards.        Mel.