“Mr. Chairman, before we put the motion ‘That the motion be now put,’ should we not first put the motion ‘That the motion “That the motion be now put” be now put’?” — Punch, 1952
Humor
Nothing Doing
Recess, County Galway, Ireland:
Aspelt, Luxembourg:
Bechyne, Czech Republic:
(“In this house, no important person was born, lived, and most importantly did not die, and that is why we live well here.”)
Záblatí-Hlásná Lhota, Czech Republic:
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(“Hlásná Lhota – a stone in whose surroundings nothing significant has demonstrably happened for several hundred years”)
Míšov, Czech Republic:
(“On 8 May 1915 in Míšov, the great Czech genius Jára Cimrman just barely missed being involved in something historically important.”)
O’Hungry’s Café, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park:
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York, Western Australia:
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Villa de Leyva, Boyacá Department, Colombia:
(“On October 13, 1825, nothing happened in this house, nor was anyone important born.”)
Fair Enough
Wikipedia’s list of cetaceans includes a photo of each species listed, but the entry for Deraniyagala’s beaked whale shows only this note:
[cetacean needed]
Bonus Wikipedia humor note: The article on British labor economist Guy Standing includes a photo of Standing seated at a 2012 conference. Some have suggested the caption “Guy Standing sitting.” So far they haven’t prevailed.
Limerick
Said a logical linguist named Rolles,
“As we always call Polish folk Poles,
For better precision
(I am a logician)
We ought to call Dutch people Holes.”
Literary
For a story on library cutbacks in a certain Essex town, the Telegraph chose the headline BOOK LACK IN ONGAR.
(Apparently apocryphal, but entertaining.)
The Social Whirl
In a 1962 nightmare, writer Thomas Meehan imagined having to introduce Uta Hagen to Yma Sumac, Ava Gardner, Abba Eban, Oona O’Neill, Ugo Betti, Ona Munson, Ida Lupino, the Aga Khan, Ira Wolfert, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Eva Gabor at a Greenwich Village cocktail party:
“Uta, Yma; Uta, Ava; Uta, Oona; Uta, Ona; Uta, Ida; Uta, Ugo; Uta, Abba; Uta, Ilya; Uta, Ira; Uta, Aga; Uta, Eva.”
Then Polish concert pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski turns up. “‘Come in, Mieczyslaw!’ I cry, with tears in my eyes. ‘I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my whole life!'”
Guardrails
The programming language SIMPLE “was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it.”
The language has only three commands, STOP, BEGIN, and END. “No matter how you arrange the statements, you can’t make a syntax error.”
The name stands for Sheer Idiots Monopurpose Programming Linguistic Environment.
“The Worst of All Puns”
At Nuremburg a wolf’s tooth was shown to travellers … on which an Abbé is represented lying dead in a meadow, with three lilies growing out of his posteriors. This is not only the worst pun that ever was carved upon a wolf’s tooth, but the worst that ever was or will be made. The Abbé is designed to express the Latin word Habe. He is lying dead in a meadow, … mort en pré; this is for mortem præ; and the three lilies in his posteriors are to be read oculis, … au cu lis. Thus, according to the annexed explanation, the whole pun, rebus, or hieroglyphic, is Habe mortem præ oculis.
— Robert Southey, Omniana, 1812
In other words, the French phrase Abbé mort en pré au cul lys (“Abbot died in a meadow with lilies in his rump”) sounds like the Latin phrase Habe mortem præ oculis (“Keep death before your eyes”). This joke appears to be referenced in Hieronymus Bosch’s 1504 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights:
Second Coming
Lord Dudley was one of the most absent men I think I ever met in society. One day he met me in the street, and invited me to meet myself. ‘Dine with me to-day; dine with me, and I will get Sydney Smith to meet you.’ I admitted the temptation he held out to me, but said I was engaged to meet him elsewhere.
— Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith, 1856
Succinct
Travelling to England with his wife and daughter in the Norwegian freighter Halibut, which ran into rough seas, [Sir Robert Menzies] sent this cable to relatives:
At sea off Perth: Exodus X, 23.
In the Bible they found these words:
They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days.
— Ray Robinson, ed., The Wit of Sir Robert Menzies, 1966