Here's "a joke without cream" from Roughing It by Mark Twain, 1873.

"People think that a sense of humour is to do with being able to recognise at a glance what is funny and what is not.  It is nothing of the kind.  It is a recognition that everything is funny if you look at it in one way rather than another.  And one of the ways of making things seem funny to other people is, for some reason, to do an almost, but not quite, exact imitation of them.  And this is a matter of noticing mannerisms, and reproducing them with a slight element of caricature.  Verbal mannerisms as well as behavioural ones.  People call these clichés, and go on about them as if it were some mark of near-illiteracy to make use of them.  So what is life supposed to be — an unremitting process of spontaneous creation?  Everybody resorts to clichés: how would would speech, or life itself, be possible? ... [I]t is part of one's sense of proportion to recognise that everything, however seriously it may deserve to be taken in one context, is inherently absurd in another.  It is particularly salutary to do so in those moments when the human race is on its high horse about being some superior form of creation — than which no spectacle could well be more laughable to anyone in a laughing mood." —N. F. Simpson's highly recommended Most of What Follows is a Complete Waste of Time: Monologues, Dialogues, Sketches and Other Writings

What are these mysteriously named musical notes from Supplement to Spons' Dictionary of Engineering, Civil, Mechanical, Military, and Naval (1879)?  We're uncomfortably reminded of the nineteen "forbidden notes" of the Boîte Diabolique, revealed in the hilarious British comedy series Look Around You.

[For Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.]

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Sherlock Holmes’ Ascertainment of the Chemical Elements of Purity

If you've ever wondered about the precise location of the funny bone, here it is.  From Otterbein College's yearbook The Sibyl, 1905.  The text reads, "Here's where we jab you."  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

It's only funny if the black cat laughs, from The Ottowan, 1914.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

The text reads, "The secret to getting back on one's feet lies in simple inversion.  Cats famously land on their feet by using a pinhole to project an inverted image."  [For the Wild Swan.]

"He on her accents hung."

To wit:

He stroked his circumflex'd bar across her double acute raised dots, her lower dot, and her slash.

[We answered this rhetorical question a few years ago, but the vintage illustration is "new," courtesy of Punch, 1877.]

Q: How many beans make five?

A: It’s something of a trick question.  The answer is "one."  One leguminous pod contains five seeds.

Note that this riddle is a corruption of "How many beans make fava."  Again, the answer is "one," though admittedly it's one very broad bean.

I woke up with various TV specials swimming in my head, on the theme of Being John Malkovich.  These are the ones I can remember:

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Malkovich!
Wicked mentalist Derren Brown hypnotizes three bedraggled homeless people into believing they're legendary actor John Malkovich.  First one to be asked for a celebrity autograph wins three days and two nights in The Address hotel at Dubai Marina, a haven for the discerning traveller.

To Be John Malkovich
Legendary actor John Malkovich and three "nobodies" who genuinely share his name vie to accept a lifetime achievement award in Hollywood, Florida.  Trouble is, the thespian is the only one without identification.

Stars in Their Id's
Prescription for disaster: an unwitting psychiatrist accepts five patients who all "believe they're John Malkovich," including the legendary actor.  By the end of group therapy, will the real John Malkovich get carried away?

Finding John
Deepak Chopra, Mick Fleetwood, Akiva Goldsman, Catherine Hardwicke and Joseph Campbell (archival footage) are just a few of the people who offer their insight into how we are all John Malkovich.  "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. Follow your Malkovich!"

"Route taken by imaginary joke":  an illustration from a 1911 issue of Life magazine.