Tag archives: humor
Do you ever long for the good old days, when the sun went around the Earth, and we were really the center of everything? Science keeps discovering new ways in which we are less and less significant, and the world more and more strange. Not many eras ago, if I were to quip, “They told […]
Here is a little quiz for you: What country is represented by (a) a part of a tree? (b) a whole tree? The part of a tree is a leaf, and the maple leaf has been the symbol of Canada for centuries, though it did not get onto the national flag until 1965. A key […]
“Have you seen my glasses?” “Unbelievable. You’re always losing them!” It’s true. I have three pair and some days I can’t find any of them. “Here they are,” Pat said, returning from the back patio. “Those are my reading glasses. I need my distance glasses if I have to go… I mean, because I want […]
No doubt you’ve heard of the usher who said, “May I sew you to your sheets?” And you probably know that such slips of the tongue are called Spoonerisms. William Archibald Spooner, the honoree of this eponym, lived much of his long life (1844-1930) at Oxford University, where he was for many years a loved […]
My mother had a favorite joke on the subject of superstition: “Well, I’m not superstitious,” she‘d say. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I would never sleep thirteen in a bed.” Nevertheless, it’s a fact that for several people to share a bed was once much more common in our culture than it has since […]
I love kids. And fortunately, they seem to like me okay, too. Which is good, because between my wife, Pat and I, we have five children, four grandchildren and one granddog that I love teaching new tricks. “Roll over, no? Sit, no? Shake, no? How about lay there like a lump? Yeah!” And now, I […]
In 1972 – about half our lifetimes ago – Dorothy and I traveled to Australia, our first of many visits, but the only one by sea. The Australian Aborigines call their distant past the “Dream-Time.” On this journey, I carried my own enduring dream. Since school-days, I’d retained in my mind a map showing the […]
I don’t want to alarm you, but this is going to be about alarms, and ways of giving them. Let’s start with our culture’s most famous false alarm: The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” The moral is clear: If you make false alarms, people may not believe it when you have a real one. But notice […]
Maybe you’ve heard about the child who came home from Sunday School reporting he’d been learning a song about a cross-eyed bear named Gladly. The song turned out to be one called “Gladly the Cross I’d Bear.” Now, let me tell you some similar misunderstandings of which I myself have been guilty. One of them […]
On December 9, 2013, I celebrated my 80th birthday at a hilltop park overlooking Santa Barbara. Inviting everybody, on a pot-luck basis, I announced, somewhat facetiously, that this would enable me to assume the role of a “Wise Old Man of the Mountain.” To my surprise, the City took this seriously, to the extent of […]
One of the best gifts I ever received was a “Rapidograph” pen, from a friend who knew I was starting to illustrate my epigrams. This pen was extremely useful, because it could draw very fine lines of a single steady width. But, like the many others which I have bought since then, it also proved […]
Some people are instantly likeable, some just the opposite. We hear much about “born leaders,” but most of us are probably born followers. And why not, so long as we’re being led in the right direction? That is the trouble. This quality called “charisma” (an expression relatively new to our modern vocabulary, though its roots […]
At Christmas 1914, when World War I had already been raging for several months, an odd phenomenon occurred along the Western Front. Men from both sides briefly stopped fighting and fraternized. This “Christmas truce” is remembered as a freak occurrence. Some were punished for having engaged in it. Fighting resumed, and the war went on […]
“Hi, Siri.” “What can I help you with?” “How do you say, ‘My name is Ernie…?’” “I don’t. My name is Siri.” “You didn’t let me finish, Siri.” “What can I help you with?” “I need to know how to say my name…” “I found this website with names.” “…In Japanese. We are going to […]
In the fall of 1785, a young Scottish farmer was working in one of his fields, when his plow happened to overturn the nest of a field mouse. The victim scampered away – but the perpetrator felt sadly about his inadvertently cruel act – and eventually wrote a poem about it. The poet was Robert […]
Recently, at one of those pleasant “curbside free libraries,” which have lately become so popular, I picked up a book called I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. I was intrigued by the title, for a personal reason. No one ever promised me a rose garden, either – and I never particularly wanted one – […]
“There’s no… air… gasp…” “I think… I’m too dizzy… to drive…” “Lucky… we are… parked then…” We were 11,796 feet up at Alpine Visitors Center on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, watching a line of people waiting zombie-like to use the outhouses – the water in the real bathrooms already shut off […]
Nobody ever made up his or her mind to be lucky. Chance and intention are at opposite ends of the spectrum of probability. Yet there are all sorts of superstitions about ways to influence your luck. But even the people who acknowledge the sheer randomness of happenstance rationalize their chances. Otherwise, lotteries would hardly be […]
One of the illustrated epigrams on which my strange career has been built shows a little cherub hovering in the air, holding a large volume, while an unseen speaker demands, “BRING ME A DICTIONARY – I WANT TO KNOW THE MEANING OF LIFE.” Well, after all, if you can’t find meaning in a dictionary, where […]
