[Wlug] noseguy text

I'm a new member. I'm an elem. librarian in NE, Pa. near Binghamton,ny I just got approval and installed a linux box in our library to run a couple of demo programs worldwatch clock simulator and kstars. In screen saver I now run phosphores, which I have written text for using echo and printf in a bash shell. I would like to use noseguy but don't understand how it works?? I have read it likes to run fortunes, and yet when I use either the text files or .dat it won't read.Permission denial, chmod 777== can't execute binary?? Regular text files are not parsed and it deadlocks. What do you think? Should I write a program in python to parse a text file(out of my ken). There is probably something stupid I can't see TIA Re-v