“I saw a sign in a hardware store to-day ‘Cast iron sinks.’ As though everyone wasn’t wise to that.”
— The New Pun Book, 1906
Humor
Clarke’s Law
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Benford’s Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Raymond’s Second Law: Any sufficiently advanced system of magic would be indistinguishable from a technology.
Sterling’s Corollary: Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic.
Langford’s application to science fiction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device.
“The Jellyfish”
Who wants my jellyfish?
I’m not sellyfish!
— Ogden Nash
News Cycle
The Spectator once ran a competition asking its readers “What would you most like to read on opening the morning paper?” One reader submitted this entry:
Our Second Competition
The First Prize in the second of this year’s competitions goes to Mr. Arthur Robinson, whose witty entry was easily the best of those we received. His choice of what he would like to read on opening his paper was headed, ‘Our Second Competition,’ and was as follows: ‘The First Prize in the second of this year’s competitions goes to Mr. Arthur Robinson, whose witty entry was easily the best of those we received. His choice of what he would like to read on opening his paper was headed “Our Second Competition,” but owing to paper restrictions we cannot print all of it.’
Next Stop …
The Busman’s Lord’s Prayer, allegedly recited by British bus drivers:
Our Farnham, who art in Hendon
Harrow be Thy name.
Thy Kingston come; thy Wimbledon,
In Erith as it is in Hendon.
Give us this day our daily Brent
And forgive us our Westminster
As we forgive those who Westminster against us.
And lead us not into Thames Ditton
But deliver us from Yeovil.
For Thine is the Kingston, the Purley and the Crawley,
For Esher and Esher.
Crouch End.
Rimshot
A neutron walks into a bar and orders a beer.
“How much do I owe you?” he says.
“For you,” says the bartender, “no charge.”
“Geographical Love Song”
In the State of Mass.
There lived a lass,
I love to go N. C.;
No other Miss.
Can e’er, I Wis.,
Be half so dear to Me.
R. I. is blue
And her cheeks the hue
Of shells where waters swash;
On her pink-white phiz.
There Nev. Ariz.
The least complexion Wash.
La.! could I win
The heart of Minn.,
I’d ask for nothing more,
But I only dream
Upon the theme,
And Conn. it o’er and Ore.
Why is it, pray,
I can’t Ala.
This love that makes me Ill.?
N. Y., O., Wy.
Kan. Nev. Ver. I
Propose to her my will?
I shun the task
‘Twould be to ask
This gentle maid to wed.
And so, to press
My suit, I guess
Alaska Pa. instead.
— Anonymous, cited in Carolyn Wells, A Whimsey Anthology, 1906
“Topographical”
An old couple living in Gloucester
Had a beautiful girl, but they loucester;
She fell from a yacht,
And never the spacht
Could be found where the cold waves had toucester.
An old lady living in Worcester
Had a gift of a handsome young rorcester;
But the way that it crough,
As ‘twould never get through,
Was more than the lady was uorcester.
At the bar in the old inn at Leicester
Was a beautiful bar-maid named Heicester;
She gave to each guest
Only what was the buest,
And they all, with one accord, bleicester.
— Anonymous, cited in Carolyn Wells, A Whimsey Anthology, 1906
Rimshot
Why should not a chicken cross the road?
It would be a fowl proceeding.
— Potter’s American Monthly, 1892
Can Do
PLEASE DO NOT BE A DOG.
— Sign, Paris park