Which is funnier: fingers or toes?

Clue:  This is according to a guide to drawing comics

Answer:  Toes.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Suck School of Comic Art, Suck.com, (Nov. 7, 1997)

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by William Keckler, who offers further advice here.

"There ought to be a book written and put in the hands of every child, enjoining the kind treatment of animals."
—Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal and Western Lancet, 1859, p. 111

From the inimitable Tom Weller, author of the classic Science Made Stupid, comes this "minim" (the perfect answer to the maxim):

Ironically, the best way to dance your way out of a support group is the two-step.

 

 

The three sad eyes of the ellipses...
by Gary Barwin

for Craig Conley

The three sad eyes of the ellipses. Something is lost. Three islands. Small songs of in a sea that prefers to forget the land. The mouth opens and begins to speak; there is nothing that can be said. One world followed by another and then another. Tiny black specks at the end of the galaxy. A three frame animation where nothing appears to happen, though perhaps down on the miniscule surface, there are different kinds of silences, memories, things forgotten or left. The trailing off, the continuing on. Small black stones in the river of speech. Three tunnels waiting for the three trains of past, present, and somewhere in between. Dots lost and drifting from i’s, j’s, or umlauts, floating between words in the cloudbound grammar above the teleological cities of the sentence. Notes from a song with neither pitch nor rhythm. The dark matter music between things. Three brother molecules in a subatomic folktale, though it is unclear which is the youngest, most foolish, most likely to wed the princess. An echo of the full stop at the end of the sentence. Things end, but their ripples mark the page with their tiny fingerprints. Here I am, though what I was is forgotten, disappeared, or unclear. I grip the cliff of the page, holding on until you get here ready to imagine what I might have been.

Brilliant!

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by William Keckler, who explains exactly what to do with a fly in the ointment.

Which is funnier: stocking feet or bare feet?

Clue:  This is according to a guide to drawing comics

Answer:  Stocking feet.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Suck School of Comic Art, Suck.com, (Nov. 7, 1997)

I misunderstood a warning sign that said "Hot cars kill dogs." I thought it was referring to a Corvette (fast cars run over animals), or perhaps a Jaguar (for a play on the food chain).

 

 

Though prima facie the opposite of highbrow, lowbrow is actually a corruption of Lord Loughborough (Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn), notorious for being so dull that he caused dullness in others.

---

And I thought the word "lowbrow" derived from the name of a beer!

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by William Keckler.

"There ought to be a book about eggs."
—Lorus Johnson Milne, A Multitude of Living Things, 1947, p. 108.

 

Which credit card is funnier: Visa or MasterCard?

Clue:  This is according to literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

Answer:  MasterCard.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Personal correspondence, Aug. 25, 2007.  Jonathan adds:

"And what a triumph for "MasterCard" to be even funnier than a word with an "ee" sound in it! "MasterCard" sounds like someone has dropped an empty corrugated* box down a flight of stairs.

*Funnier word than "cardboard."

He shook my hand heartily and slapped me on the back and gave me a slice of cake. I had never had cake, and in retrospect it doesn’t make much sense that he would greet me at nine thirty in the morning with cake, but he did, and it was delicious. A white cream cake with stripes of sunflower orange.

—Dave Eggers, What is the What, 2006

"Someone ought to write a book exploring the political alibis men and states have given for their awful actions."
—Arnold Wesker, Said the Old Man to the Young Man, 1978, p. 181.

Folklore warns against eating oysters in months without "R's" (namely May through August).  Those oyster-free months constitute the "dog days of summer," which is ironic given that "R is the dog's letter" (Ben Jonson, 1636).

"Why make a book? Why bother? . . .

"Making a book creates a midnight in which synaptic lightning illuminates our skull’s planetarium. It lets us peek into how we think we might work. . . .

"A book is a delivery system for a hallucinogen you ingest though the eyes and digest in the mind. A book allows one imagination to taste the inside of another.”

—David Barringer, There’s Nothing Funny about Design, 2009.

(via DJMisc)

 

 

Which windy phenomenon is funnier: a hat blowing off or an umbrella turning inside out?

Clue:  This is according to Fordham University’s Thought magazine

Answer:  an umbrella.  “An umbrella turning inside out is funnier than a hat blowing off because an umbrella is made to be opened, to change its shape when its owner wills.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Fordham University, Thought (Spring 1952), p. 59

We popularly say that ASAP is an acronym meaning "as soon as possible."  But ASAP comes to us from the Greek storyteller ÆSAP, whose brief fables can be read on the quick.

 

 

The blogger at Grammar Tales recently encountered our One-Letter Words: A Dictionary at the University of Toronto library: "My first thought was that this must be a very short book."

Speaking of One-Letter Words, we hear that our dictionary is going out of print, so be sure to snag your copy ASAP!

The professor abandoned teaching by degrees.

If they were good it would be seene,
Good is as visible as greene,
And to all eyes it selfe betrayes.

—John Donne, ‘Communitie,’ 1633; quoted by Bruce R. Smith in The Key of Green, 2009

"Somebody should write a book on 'Debunking the Debunkers,' somebody, that is, aside from the Freudians."
—Ralph Tyler Flewelling, The Personalist, 1947, p. 435.

True or False: Vegetables are “as funny now as they have ever been, especially leeks”?

Clue:  This is according to comic writer Terry Pratchett

Answer:  False.  Vegetables are “not as funny as they used so be, especially leeks.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Terry Pratchett, The Truth (2001), p. 106.

 

 

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

See the entire poem here.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by William Keckler, who offers further information about shadows here. Jonathan Caws-Elwitt quips: Q. What did one shadow puppet say to the other? A. Let’s have a show of hands.

"There needs to be a book on native Oklahoma pests."
—"Bugs and Other Scary Things in Oklahoma," June 30, 2007.

 

Text courtesy of William Keckler.

Who are funnier: superstitious atheists or superstitious Catholics?

Clue:  This is according to Catholic World magazine

Answer:  Superstitious atheists  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Paulist Fathers, Catholic World, vol. 123 (1926), p. 840

"The & represents life and what comes after."
—visual artist Iain Baxter&, who legally added the & to his name

(Thanks, Gary Barwin!)

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Text by William Keckler.

The eleventh hour leaves me at sixes and sevens (unless I'm dressed to the nines).

 

 

We're honored that our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound is a favorite specimen of Year 2 New Media students at the University for the Creative Arts in Epsom.  Folks in the United Kingdom know their unicorn lineage down to a point.

Atheists who celebrate only bar and bat mitzvahs: Jews in a formal life.

 

Which word is funnier: credit card or money?

Clue:  This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain

Answer:  Credit card, as it is “more specific.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Christopher Hart, Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain (1998), p. 107