Wit's End

What Wit is, How it Works, and Why We Need It

James Geary 2019, Tigard Library 809.7 GEA

Lots'a'funny. Overwhelming in one read.

• p23: Lecturing at Columbia, linguist J. L. Austin claimed "no example existed of a language in which two positives make a negative. Sidney Morgenbesser stage-whispered "Yeah, yeah."
• p24: During the 1984 campaign versus 56yp Walter Mondale, 73yo Reagan was asked whether he was still up to the job. "I will not make age an issue of this campaign; I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

• p48: She had read so much about the harmful health effects that she decided to give up: A) Smoking Reading

• p53: Dublin Archbishop Richard Whately (1787-1863):
  • Why can't you starve in the desert? Because you can eat the sand which is there.
  • Who brought the sandwiches there? Noah sent Ham, and his decendants mustered and bred.
  • Noah's ark was made of gopher wood, but Joan of Arc was Maid of Orleans.
• p54: George Carlin: Atheism is a non-prophet institution. He was not atheist or agnostic but acrostic: "The whole thing puzzles me"
• p55: John Lennon, how do you find America? "Turn left at Greenland"
• p58: "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible"