The "unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities" is a definition I like for "humor". I first read it, of all places, unexpectedly in a novel titled "The Marathon Man" by William Goldman.
Here's a little story I read some years ago in a nice little column, titled "Words, Wit and Wisdom" penned by William Morris, that illustrates that "deftnition". It wasn't intended to be funny, but see if it doesn't fit admirably.
An Air Force major was talking about a publication bearing the title "Normal and Reverse English Word List" that was the result of an Air Force research project (for what purpose I can't imagine) and it resulted in eight giant volumes encompassing 354,252 English words taken from a variety of dictionaries, spelled in alphabetical order, then carefully spelled backwards, also in alphabetical sequence. This monstrous job was undertaken by computer, of course.
But the most engaging aspect of the entire work was this notation in the preface: "For reasons best known to the computer there are two more words in the reverse list."
In other words, the computer created two backward-spelled words...and no one knew what they were!
That unexpected juxtaposition of incongruities deftnition also fits more mundane "surprise ending" stories, except they are usually intended to be funny at their ends. Examples are a lot easier to find, or even to foment, as I found out some years ago from a writing class where I issued an assignment to "write a short, short story with a surprise ending". This ultimately resulted in a small-press-published book titled "Script Tease - The Treasury of Surprise Endings" that class members autographed and sold to all their families and friends, while basking in the limelight for their 15 minutes of fame.
I love this type ingenuity, so I keep a folder for collecting them. So, here, years after that little book cause its little stir, I offer you more "script teases".
And here are a couple for the "adult" readers:
A guy walks into a bar, sits down, takes a little guy out of his left pocket and places him on the bar. The he reaches into another pocket and removes a small piano and stool and puts them on the bar. The little guy walks over and begins to beat out some of the greatest blues the patrons had ever heard.
The barkeep asks where in the world he got the little musician.
Believe it or not, I found an old bottle on the beach, pulled the cork out of it and out popped a really old genie. He gave me two wishes, but, after seeing this, I wasn't anxious to use the second one.
"What'll you take for it then?" asks the intrigued barkeep.
So they made a deal and the barkeep used the passed-on second wish. Almost immediately the entire bar was filled with ducks, roosting even on patrons' heads. "You and your damned old genie," the barkeep shouted. "I think he's deaf. I asked for a thousand bucks, not ducks!"
The gift-seller gathered up his little man and piano to go, then turned to the barkeep and asked, "Do you really think I asked for a 12-inch pianist?"
An American, touring Spain, wanted to try the local cuisine. While sipping an aperitif, he noted the sizzling, great smelling, scrumptious-appearing platter being served at the next table. When the waiter asked his order, he said, "I think I'd like the same thing you just served at the next table."
"Ah, senor, you have excellent taste. Those are the bull's testicles from the bull fight this morning, a real delicacy."
Momentarily daunted, the American watched the neighbor wolfing down his order with evident pleasure, and said, "What the hell! When in Spain...go ahead and bring me an order."
"But I am so sorry, senor. Since there is only one bull fight per morning, there can be only one special serving per day. But, if you come early tomorrow, l will put a save on the order-of-the-day for you."
Next day the American entered the restaurant in expectation and was served his promised specialty. After a few bites he motioned for the waiter. "These are much smaller than those I saw you serve yesterday," he complained.
"Si, senor," the waiter replied with a sad face. "Sometimes the bull wins."
Monday, October 27, 2014
Plagiarism and Other Copywrongs
On the copyright page of Jan Adkins' book Toolchest was placed this statement:
"We have gone to considerable difficulty and expense to assemble a staff of necromancers,. sorcerers, shamans, conjurers and lawyers to visit nettlesome and mystifying discomforts on any ninny who endeavors to reproduce or transmit this book in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the publisher. Watch yourself."
When a New York publishing house brought out a volume of blank pages called The Nothing Book, the publisher was accused of plagiarism by the Belgian publisher of a blank-paged book that had been creatively titled The Memoirs of an Amnesiac.
The American firm rejected the claim, contending that blankness was in the public domain, therefor not subject to copyright restrictions. --UPI
The Rev. William Wallace, a Dominican priest and former researcher at Catholic University who for 15 years studied the manuscripts of Galileo Galilei, the 16th century scientist whose work has been called the foundation of all modern science, found that all three of Galileo's most important notebooks show "considerable evidence of copying, or at least of being based on other sources....Practically all of this material...derives from textbooks and lecture notes that were being used at the Collegio Romano, a Roman university Galileo visited."
"Today people would call this plagiarism," Wallace noted. "But at that time everyone did it. People then felt that ideas, once shown to be right, were automatically the property of everyone. People were flattered to have their class notes used by other instructors. "I'm not saying Galileo was not the 'father' of modern science, just that there was a 'grandfather' too." --Washington Post
In 1991 a committee at Boston University - where Martin Luther King, Jr. received his doctoral degree from the Division of Theological Studies - concluded that he had plagiarized the writings of others in his 1955 dissertation.
This followed the 1990 findings by Clayborne Carson, Stanford history professor chosen by Dr. King's widow to head the king Papers Project, that other academic papers by the late Nobel Peace Prize winner contained numerous passages that "can be defined as plagiarism".
His conclusion was supported by Keith D. Miller, Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University, who added that King's tendency to plagiarize should be understood in the context of his background on the pulpit, where "preachers borrow partly because their culture fails to define the word as a commodity and instead assumes that everyone creates language and no one owns it."
All the scholars involved stressed that their findings did not diminish King's accomplishments.
-- Parade 8/94
Writer's Digest has also offered four interesting copywrongs:
Alvin B. Harrison's short story titled :The Perlu", which ran in the June 1935 issue of Esquire Magazine, was exposed by alert readers as a plagiarism of Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing"...which, in turn, was revealed as a rip-off of Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla".
Impersonators of writers Edna Ferber and Octavus Roy Cohen once appeared together on the same lecture program - neither aware that the other was an impostor.
Lloyd Lewis, age 15, entered a 1936 essay-writing contest sponsored by performer Eddie Cantor and carried off he $5,000 prize. He had copied, word for word - and in professed innocence - an article by the president of the University of Newark, entitled "How Can We Stay Out of War?" from an issue of Peace Digest.
Dr. John Hedley Barnhart, a bibliographer at the New York Botanical Gardens in 1919, found that 14 scientists profiled in the most recent Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography were fictitious, although their bios had been reprinted continuously since 1886.
Embarrassed Appleton execs vowed to set their house in order. But by 1936 an additional 70 counterfeit biographies were exposed.
"We have gone to considerable difficulty and expense to assemble a staff of necromancers,. sorcerers, shamans, conjurers and lawyers to visit nettlesome and mystifying discomforts on any ninny who endeavors to reproduce or transmit this book in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the publisher. Watch yourself."
When a New York publishing house brought out a volume of blank pages called The Nothing Book, the publisher was accused of plagiarism by the Belgian publisher of a blank-paged book that had been creatively titled The Memoirs of an Amnesiac.
The American firm rejected the claim, contending that blankness was in the public domain, therefor not subject to copyright restrictions. --UPI
The Rev. William Wallace, a Dominican priest and former researcher at Catholic University who for 15 years studied the manuscripts of Galileo Galilei, the 16th century scientist whose work has been called the foundation of all modern science, found that all three of Galileo's most important notebooks show "considerable evidence of copying, or at least of being based on other sources....Practically all of this material...derives from textbooks and lecture notes that were being used at the Collegio Romano, a Roman university Galileo visited."
"Today people would call this plagiarism," Wallace noted. "But at that time everyone did it. People then felt that ideas, once shown to be right, were automatically the property of everyone. People were flattered to have their class notes used by other instructors. "I'm not saying Galileo was not the 'father' of modern science, just that there was a 'grandfather' too." --Washington Post
In 1991 a committee at Boston University - where Martin Luther King, Jr. received his doctoral degree from the Division of Theological Studies - concluded that he had plagiarized the writings of others in his 1955 dissertation.
This followed the 1990 findings by Clayborne Carson, Stanford history professor chosen by Dr. King's widow to head the king Papers Project, that other academic papers by the late Nobel Peace Prize winner contained numerous passages that "can be defined as plagiarism".
His conclusion was supported by Keith D. Miller, Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University, who added that King's tendency to plagiarize should be understood in the context of his background on the pulpit, where "preachers borrow partly because their culture fails to define the word as a commodity and instead assumes that everyone creates language and no one owns it."
All the scholars involved stressed that their findings did not diminish King's accomplishments.
-- Parade 8/94
Writer's Digest has also offered four interesting copywrongs:
Alvin B. Harrison's short story titled :The Perlu", which ran in the June 1935 issue of Esquire Magazine, was exposed by alert readers as a plagiarism of Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing"...which, in turn, was revealed as a rip-off of Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla".
Impersonators of writers Edna Ferber and Octavus Roy Cohen once appeared together on the same lecture program - neither aware that the other was an impostor.
Lloyd Lewis, age 15, entered a 1936 essay-writing contest sponsored by performer Eddie Cantor and carried off he $5,000 prize. He had copied, word for word - and in professed innocence - an article by the president of the University of Newark, entitled "How Can We Stay Out of War?" from an issue of Peace Digest.
Dr. John Hedley Barnhart, a bibliographer at the New York Botanical Gardens in 1919, found that 14 scientists profiled in the most recent Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography were fictitious, although their bios had been reprinted continuously since 1886.
Embarrassed Appleton execs vowed to set their house in order. But by 1936 an additional 70 counterfeit biographies were exposed.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Laughter Translates Into Any Language
It's true that laughter translates into any language. Even from Russian, where life for the most part is no joke, as shown from the following.
An elderly woman enters the Kremlin and insists on seeing the General Secretary. Mikhail Gorbachev agrees to meet her, and asks, "What can I do for you?"
"I have one question that's been bothering me," she answers. "Was Communism invented by a politician or a scientist?"
"A politician," he answers candidly.
"That explains it," she continues testily. "A scientist would have tried it on mice first!"
--from Grinning With the Gipper: A Celebration of the Wit, Wisdom and Wisecracks of Ronald Reagan, by James S. Denton and Peter Schweitzer, Atlantic Monthly Press
The newspaper Sovetskaya Kultura published a letter from a dispirited Odessa film director complaining about all the privileges available to foreign tourists and to Russians who use foreign currency, while ordinary Soviet citizens who lack foreign money, are refused service at many places along the Black Sea coast. He recalled a brief conversation with a Russian child from the area:
"Vovochka, what do you want to be when you grow up?" he had asked.
"A foreigner!" she had replied.
--New York Times, July 22, 1987
When Stalin was on his deathbed, he called in Khrushchev and said, "I've prepared two letters. When you find yourself in difficulty over your economic policies, open the first one. When you are in real trouble and your life is in danger, open the second one. Nikita didn't understand this strange advice, but he accepted the two letters Stalin handed him.
Later, when an economic crisis seemed imminent, Nikita opened the first letter. It stated, "Blame everything on me!" Nikita immediately saw the benefit of this advice and promptly unmasked Stalin as a murderer and a despot. He weathered the crisis nicely.
In 1964, when a real showdown came in another Kremlin power struggle, Nikita opened the second letter. It was even more brief, stating, "Prepare two letters."
--Matt Weinstock, Los Angeles Times
Some of the funniest stuff was immigrated with comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who has made it big time in the USA by telling it like it was when he was back home in Russia before the century changed.
Two citizens were talking about the merit of Communism. One asked, "If you had two houses, would you give me one?"
"Of course," the other answered. "You are my fellow Communist."
"What if you had two automobiles? Would you give me one?"
"Sure, you're my fellow Communist."
"How about if you had two chickens?" probed the first citizen, getting down to the meat of the questioning.
"No!"
"Why not?"
" Because I HAVE two chickens!"
How do you improve the value of a coin from a Communist country?
You bore four holes in it and sell it as a button.
A citizen went into a Russian auto dealership, bought a car, and was told to come back in ten years to pick it up.
"Morning or afternoon?" the buyer asks.
"What difference does that make?" asks the dealer.
"The plumbers will be coming on that morning," reports the buyer.
President Clinton and Russian leader Yeltsin were standing on a cliff overlooking Moscow, each doing a little bragging, when the question of whose secret service staff was more loyal came up. Clinton, always the joker, turned to one of his agents and says, "Why don't you jump off this cliff for me?"
The agent pragmatically replies, "Can't do that, sir. I have a wife and three kids."
Yeltsin, with a winner's grin, turns to one of his agents and says, "Jump!" And the agent leaps off the cliff.
The American agent, aghast, runs down and helps the badly bruised Russian agent up. "Why did you jump?" he asks.
"Because I too have a wife and three children!"
In English, a holiday is the word used to describe going some place different to have fun and get away from all one's trials and tribulations.
In Russia, that's known as defecting.
What's the definition of a quartet? A Communist symphony orchestra after a tour outside the Iron Curtain.
An elderly woman enters the Kremlin and insists on seeing the General Secretary. Mikhail Gorbachev agrees to meet her, and asks, "What can I do for you?"
"I have one question that's been bothering me," she answers. "Was Communism invented by a politician or a scientist?"
"A politician," he answers candidly.
"That explains it," she continues testily. "A scientist would have tried it on mice first!"
--from Grinning With the Gipper: A Celebration of the Wit, Wisdom and Wisecracks of Ronald Reagan, by James S. Denton and Peter Schweitzer, Atlantic Monthly Press
The newspaper Sovetskaya Kultura published a letter from a dispirited Odessa film director complaining about all the privileges available to foreign tourists and to Russians who use foreign currency, while ordinary Soviet citizens who lack foreign money, are refused service at many places along the Black Sea coast. He recalled a brief conversation with a Russian child from the area:
"Vovochka, what do you want to be when you grow up?" he had asked.
"A foreigner!" she had replied.
--New York Times, July 22, 1987
When Stalin was on his deathbed, he called in Khrushchev and said, "I've prepared two letters. When you find yourself in difficulty over your economic policies, open the first one. When you are in real trouble and your life is in danger, open the second one. Nikita didn't understand this strange advice, but he accepted the two letters Stalin handed him.
Later, when an economic crisis seemed imminent, Nikita opened the first letter. It stated, "Blame everything on me!" Nikita immediately saw the benefit of this advice and promptly unmasked Stalin as a murderer and a despot. He weathered the crisis nicely.
In 1964, when a real showdown came in another Kremlin power struggle, Nikita opened the second letter. It was even more brief, stating, "Prepare two letters."
--Matt Weinstock, Los Angeles Times
Some of the funniest stuff was immigrated with comedian Yakov Smirnoff, who has made it big time in the USA by telling it like it was when he was back home in Russia before the century changed.
Two citizens were talking about the merit of Communism. One asked, "If you had two houses, would you give me one?"
"Of course," the other answered. "You are my fellow Communist."
"What if you had two automobiles? Would you give me one?"
"Sure, you're my fellow Communist."
"How about if you had two chickens?" probed the first citizen, getting down to the meat of the questioning.
"No!"
"Why not?"
" Because I HAVE two chickens!"
How do you improve the value of a coin from a Communist country?
You bore four holes in it and sell it as a button.
A citizen went into a Russian auto dealership, bought a car, and was told to come back in ten years to pick it up.
"Morning or afternoon?" the buyer asks.
"What difference does that make?" asks the dealer.
"The plumbers will be coming on that morning," reports the buyer.
President Clinton and Russian leader Yeltsin were standing on a cliff overlooking Moscow, each doing a little bragging, when the question of whose secret service staff was more loyal came up. Clinton, always the joker, turned to one of his agents and says, "Why don't you jump off this cliff for me?"
The agent pragmatically replies, "Can't do that, sir. I have a wife and three kids."
Yeltsin, with a winner's grin, turns to one of his agents and says, "Jump!" And the agent leaps off the cliff.
The American agent, aghast, runs down and helps the badly bruised Russian agent up. "Why did you jump?" he asks.
"Because I too have a wife and three children!"
In English, a holiday is the word used to describe going some place different to have fun and get away from all one's trials and tribulations.
In Russia, that's known as defecting.
What's the definition of a quartet? A Communist symphony orchestra after a tour outside the Iron Curtain.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
My Favorite Little Stories With Surprise Endngs
I love stories that are concise, where the teller is so good he/she gets the whole story told in few words. That shows either great skill or great editing and both should be revered in this age where neither is much practiced in day-to-day give and take. These are some of the favorites I've been told.
"When do you want to start legal proceedings?" asked the lawyer.
"Never," answered grandad disgustedly. "I just gave you HIS side of the story!"
"Let me give him a little trial run," he said, mounting up. "Good Lord," he said and the horse responded so quickly he nearly lost his seat. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed in surprise, and the horse went into a gallop. But up ahead grandad saw a ravine across their path, and the horse seemed to be expecting to jump it. But grandad wasn't a jumper and he started yelling, "Whoa, whoa!"
Just in time he remembered the magic word. "Amen!" he yelled, and the horse skidded to a stop, right on the edge of the deep cleft. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed in relief.
Law & Ardor
My grandad on my dad's side kept a long-running dispute with a neighboring farmer. He finally decided to get a lawyer to determine the legal aspects of the controversy. After he presented a heavily one-sided version of the dispute to the lawyer, that worthy assured him that the case would be cut-and-dried."When do you want to start legal proceedings?" asked the lawyer.
"Never," answered grandad disgustedly. "I just gave you HIS side of the story!"
Prayer Conditioned
Grandad bought a beautiful Palomino pony that had belonged to an itinerant preacher man, one of those who traveled between parishes. The seller told him that the preacher had trained his horse a bit differently, calling "Good Lord" for giddyup and "Amen" for whoa. Grandad smiled at the humor in this, saying that that would make interesting conversation starters."Let me give him a little trial run," he said, mounting up. "Good Lord," he said and the horse responded so quickly he nearly lost his seat. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed in surprise, and the horse went into a gallop. But up ahead grandad saw a ravine across their path, and the horse seemed to be expecting to jump it. But grandad wasn't a jumper and he started yelling, "Whoa, whoa!"
Just in time he remembered the magic word. "Amen!" he yelled, and the horse skidded to a stop, right on the edge of the deep cleft. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed in relief.
My Time Is Your Time
At 6 a.m. every morning, on the way to work, the owner of a large lumber mill in town stopped at the jewelry store in town, pressed his face and hands to the storefront window to see the large clock inside, so he could set his watch to have the correct time to blow the mill whistle for shift changes. He didn't realize this left unsightly smudges on the window.
The jeweler, who fastidiously cleaned his window every day, wondered for months who was smudging it. He finally decided to stay in the store overnight and catch the culprit.
Next morning he saw the mill owner's face pressed up against his window, and he ran out to confront him. "For months I've been cleaning your face smudges off my window. Why the heck are you doing that?"
"Well," the mill owner replied, "I've been setting my watch by your clock so I can blow the mill whistle at the correct times."
"My God, man," exclaimed the jeweler, "I've been setting that clock by your mill whistle!"
Cause for Alarm
The bank examiner paid a surprise visit to investigate a report that officers of the small-town bank spent most of the day playing cards. Peeking in a window, he caught the executives in the act, so he set off the burglar alarm, intending to give them a scare.
But not one of them so much as blinked an eye. Instead, a few minutes later a bartender from the saloon across the street came running over with four pitchers of beer.
Turnabout
Young Dan Andersen and old Rolf Petterson owned small grocery stores in the same block. They had had a price war over eggs going on for some time, which depended on the supply available from local ranchers. First Dan would cut his price, then Rolf would follow, and on and on. These cut rates affected Dan's profit line enough that he finally went to the older man in despair, saying, "I surrender. We've been selling eggs at a loss for too long...."
But, before he could finish his lament, old Rolf grinned and replied, "Not me!You see, I've been buying my eggs from you."
Flight Plan
The passenger plane had just been cleared for landing and the Captain went on the intercom requesting passengers remain in their seats with seat belts fastened until the plane stoppped and the seat belt sign went on. But, as soon as the plane touched down, passengers swarmed the middle aisle reaching for overhead luggage racks. Again came the captain's request. And, again, it was ignored.
The captain then commanded, "Please clear the aisle so I can see to back up."
There was immediate compliance!
--Reprinted from Reader's Digest, courtesy Esther T. Smith
Shaggy Dog Tale
A big flea jumped over the swinging doors of a saloon, sampled three patrons' whiskeys, then jumped back out again. He landed smack on his face in the middle of the street. "Damn!" he said, slowly picking himself up. "Someone moved my dog!"
--Paul B. Lowney, "Offbeat Humor", Peter Pauper Press
Alibi
A Hollywood producer was driving home after a celebratory evening on the town. Within a few miles of home two California Highway Patrolmen stopped him. He was trying to walk a straight line when another car crashed into a turnoff railing behind them. The patrolmen told the producer to wait there and they ran toward the wreck.
The producer, however, saw his chance to escape and drove on home, shut the car in the garage, ran unsteadily into the house and told his wife, if any police came, to tell them he was in bed and had been home all night.
When police did arrive, she dutifully told their little lie.
When police did arrive, she dutifully told their little lie.
"We'd like to see his car, if you don't mind," said a trooper.
"It's in the garage," she replied.
"Open it, please," the trooper insisted. So she did. And there, inside the garage, was their police car!
The Cardinal Rule
A man decided to become a monk, joining an order where silence was the cardinal rule. He would be allowed to say two words once every decade.
After the first ten years the head monk called him in. "Do you have anything you want to say on your ten-year anniversary?" he asked.
"Food's cold," reported the novice tersely, and he turned and walked out.
Another ten-year anniversary arrived and the monk this time told the head monk, "Bed's hard" and he walked out frowning.
Still another decade had passed and the monk reported in to the head monk. "I quit," he said this time.
The head monk, looked at him with annoyance. "I'm not surprised. You've been complaining ever since you got here."
--Paul E. Snow in Reader's Digest
From the Mouth of a Babe
A little girl walks into a pet shop and asks in a sweet lisp, "Excuthe me, mithter, do you have wittle wabbits?"
The friendly shopkeeper asks in child-speak, "Would you like a wittle white wabbit or a fuwwy bwack one?"
The little girl regards him for a moment then replies, "I weally don't fink my python giveth a thit."
--Courtesy Annet Mahendru
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