Archive for Jokes

PDQ

I just finished reading Prof. Peter Schickele’s 1976 book The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, which I’ve been glancing over occasionally ever since I encountered it on my father’s bookshelf as a kid, but which I had never read in full before. (Even reading just the titles of some of the PDQ Bach pieces—especially the […]

Dog crosses

Philpotts (the cooperative’s dog) is a cross between an Afghan and an English sheepdog; first he chases the sheep, then he knits them into sweaters. (From Joanna Russ’s novel On Strike Against God.) I welcome suggestions for what other hybrid dog breeds might do, along similar lines.

Lorre

From Howard Waldrop’s afterword to his story “The Effects of Alienation”: [Peter Lorre] arrived in England knowing three words of English: Milk, Hamburger, Yes. He got his first job with Hitchcock because someone told him Hitch liked to tell long boring shaggy-dog stories. Lorre went up, shook his hand, watched Hitchcock's lips move for five […]

Words contained in other words

I’ve been hearing joke phrases like “We put the fun back in dysfunctional!” most of my life, but somehow I’ve apparently never written about them here, nor tried to put together a list of such phrases. Fortunately for me, Morgan Friedman has put together such a list, at their Words in Words page. (Interestingly, that […]

Walking into bars

I really enjoyed this set of “…walks into a bar” jokes about various aspects of language. Some examples: A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. A bar was walked into by the passive voice. Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” A malapropism […]