At suppertime he [Minstral, a poodle] would camp underneath the table in front of me and would down anything I slipped him — meat, fish, pasta, the occasional napkin, even vegetables, including Brussels sprouts. In those days there was a TV show called Lassie, wherein every week a boy named Timmy — who was, with all due respect, an idiot — would get stuck in a well, or fall into some quicksand, or get into some other dire predicament. Then his faithful collie, Lassie, would race back to the farmhouse and bark at Timmy’s parents — who were not themselves rocket scientists (For example, Timmy was eventually replaced by an entirely new boy named Jeff, and they didn’t even notice that.) — until they finally figured out, with some difficulty (“What’s wrong, girl? Are you hungry?”), what Lassie was trying to tell them, even though this happened every single week. So they’d go rescue Timmy, and everybody would praise Lassie for being a hero.
To my mind, Minstral was way more heroic. Any dog can run around barking. But show me the episode where Lassie eats Timmy’s Brussels sprouts.
from Lessons from Lucy, by Dave Barry
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I’ve been paying into the Social Security system since the French and Indian War, and I want to cash in. Yes, I am aware that Social Security is basically a giant Ponzi scheme, and the we baby boomers, as we retire in vast numbers and start collecting from the system, will be imposing an enormous, unfair and potentially ruinous financial burden on younger generations. I view this as payback for what the younger generations have done to music.
from Lessons from Lucy, by Dave Barry
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You’re only young once, but you can always be immature.
from Lessons from Lucy, by Dave Barry
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Green Eyes [his wife] is not worried about The Widow wooing me away. And I say: “Why not? I am a decent fellow and can be nice when I put my mind to it.” and she says: “You sit and watch television in your undershirt and scratch your stomach through the most beautiful parts.” And I say: “But how would The Widow know that?” And she says: “Because I told her.”
from The Squirrel Cage, by Douglass Welch
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Francis Galton … was Charles Darwin’s cousin. [He] wrote a popular book called The Art of Travel, which offered explorers practical information such as a formula for determining the trajectory of a charging animal and advice to hire women for expeditions, explaining that they like to carry heavy objects and cost little to feed because they can just lick their fingers while cooking.
from River of the Gods, by Candice Millard
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I have held a lot of different jobs in my life. I was an accountant. I once worked — this is true — for the Illinois State Unemployment Compensation Board, behind the counter. This is true. And at that time we made $60 a week, and the claimants made $55. This is true. This is true. And they only had to come in one day a week. Now, it took me about a week to figure that out. So, I really did get fired and wound up on the other side of the line and only had to come in one day a week.
from SNL sketch, by Bob Newhart
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[Admiral Bull] Halsey was not convinced that the peace would stick — and even if the Japanese government really meant to surrender, there was every reason to expect kamikaze attacks by defiant pilots. In a message that prompted hearty laughter throughout the fleet, he ordered the Hellcat and Corsair pilots to “investigate and shoot down all snoopers — not vindictively, but in a friendly sort of way.”
from Twilight of the Gods, by Ian w. Toll
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From a 1935 Japanese book on motoring directions. It wasn’t meant to be poetry, but was made so when someone added line-breaks.
Beware the Festive Dog
At the rise of the hand,
of policeman, stop rapidly.
Do not pass him by
or otherwise disrespect him.
When a passenger of the foot
hove in sight, tootle the horn trumpet
to him melodiously at first.
If he still obstacles your passage,
tootle him with vigor
and express by word of the mouth
the warning “Hi, Hi!”
Beware the wandering horse
that he shall not take fright
as you pass him.
Do not explode
the exhaust box at him.
Go soothingly by
or stop by the road-side
till he pass away.
Give big space
to the festive dog
that makes sport
in the road-way.
Avoid entanglement of dog
with your wheel-spokes.
Go soothingly on the grease-mud,
as there lurk the skid demon.
Press the brake of the foot
as you roll round the corners
to save the collapse
and tie-up.
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Twenty-five minutes brought us to the Bryson Tower, a white stucco palace with fretted lanterns in the forecourt and tall date palms. The entrance was in an L, up marble steps, through a Moorish archway, and over a lobby that was too big and a carpet that was too blue. Blue Ali Baba oil jars were dotted around, big enough to keep tigers in. There was a desk and a night clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail.
Degarmo lunged past the desk towards an open elevator beside which a tired old man sat on a stool waiting for a customer. The clerk snapped at Degarmo’s back like a terrier.
“One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?”
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say ‘whom’?”
“Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.”
Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it.”
from The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler
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The Colonel snorted. “It seems to me, my innocents,” he said, “that you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. You may be fighting a just war, but against the wrong enemy. It isn’t the very rich who are a danger to any country but the ignorant poor. It is the latter who are always trying to pull down the structure and entomb themselves with it, instead of endeavoring to learn how wealth is acquired and following the example. And for that matter, you half-wits,” the Colonel continued, “who is it that supports charities, endows foundations, creates universities, aids hospitals, and makes possible research intended to relieve every human ailment? It is the rich. The world today would be unspeakably ghastly if the philanthropies of the wealthy were to come to an end. You can afford to leave them their toys.
from The Zoo Gang, by Paul Gallico
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A theater critics review of King Lear:
Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that some one else was about to play the Ace.
from A Sub-Treasury of American Humor, by E.B. and Katharine White (eds.)
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Proof we need editors:
Crawling about on hands and knees with their red hair often touching, is the only way the two men could have studied the maps, following the Missouri around the great bend to the Rocky Mountains, and then down the Columbia to the Pacific, extending through the archway and under Jefferson’s suspended bed.
from John Colter, by Burton Harris
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Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, “social justice.”
seen online, by Thomas Sowell
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TV is a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything.
Fred Allen
