“The boy who explained the meaning of the words fort and fortress must have had rather vague ideas as to masculine and feminine nouns. He wrote: ‘A fort is a place to put men in, and a fortress a place to put women in.'”
— Henry B. Wheatley, Literary Blunders, 1893
A decrepit old gas man named Peter,
While hunting around for the meter,
Touched a leak with his light.
He arose out of sight,
And, as anyone can see by reading this, he also destroyed the meter.
— Anonymous
Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:
“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”
Nurse: Is anything bothering you?
Buddy Rich: Yes … country music!
Those were his last words.
Best entries in The Canonical List of Weird Band Names:
A few are designed to look good on a marquee, like FREE BEER AND CHICKEN and HORNETS ATTACK VICTOR MATURE.
A samurai once asked Zen master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered, “How am I supposed to know?”
“How do you know? You’re a Zen master!” exclaimed the samurai.
“Yes, but not a dead one,” Hakuin answered.
A guy is sitting at home when there’s a knock at the door.
He opens it and there’s a snail sitting on the doorstep.
He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.
Three years later the guy is sitting at home and there’s a knock at the door.
He opens it and the same snail is sitting on the doorstep.
The snail says, “What the hell was that about?”
Epitaphs, proposed by their owners:
Mel Blanc: “That’s all, folks!”
Jack Lemmon: “In”
Jackie Gleason: “And away we go!”
Spike Milligan: “I told you I was ill.”
Peter Ustinov: “Do not walk on the grass.”
An Irishman, an Englishman, and a Scotsman are out walking when they capture a leprechaun. It agrees to give each of them one wish.
The Scot says, “My grandfather was a fisherman, my father’s a fisherman, I’m a fisherman, and my son will be a fisherman. I want the oceans full of fish for all eternity.” The leprechaun winks and instantly the oceans are teeming with fish.
Amazed, the Englishman says, “All right. I want a wall around England, protecting her, so that no one will get in for all eternity.”
Again the leprechaun winks, and suddenly there’s a huge wall around England.
The Irishman says, “I’m curious — please tell me more about this wall.”
“Well,” says the leprechaun, “it’s 150 feet high and 50 feet thick, protecting England so that nothing can get in or out.”
The Irishman says, “Fill it up with water.”
On March 15, 1980, the Boston Globe ran an editorial about the nation’s economic woes:
Certainly it is in the self-interest of all Americans to impose upon themselves the kind of economic self-discipline that President Carter urged repeatedly yesterday in his sober speech to the nation. As the President said, inflation, now running at record rates, is a cruel tax, one that falls most harshly upon those least able to bear the burden.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it carried the headline “Mush From the Wimp.”
In 1984 Globe editorial writer Kirk Scharfenberg admitted he’d written it. “I meant it as an in-house joke and thought it would be removed before publication,” he wrote. “It appeared in 161,000 copies of the Globe the next day.”
