Funniest Thing Quotes

That was the funniest thing I'd heard in days. You're kidding, right? PLEASE tell me you have a stronger motive for me than 'fair is fair.' Life isn't FAIR, Dean....Nothing is fair, EVER. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I need to help you because FAIR IS FAIR? Try, 'I need you to help me so I won't rip out your spine and beat you with it.' I MIGHT respond to that. MAYBE.

And it's the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven't been falling at all. I've been floating.

Clarabelle laughed like she'd just heard the funniest thing ever. "Of course you HOPE you won't die, Valkyrie! Who would HOPE to die? That's just SILLY! But you probably WILL die, that's what I'm saying. Don't you think so?

You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color.

This is…magic?” Fitz laughed – a full body laugh, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard [...] “No,” he said when he’d regained control. “Magic is a stupid idea humans came up with to try to explain things they couldn’t understand.

Ransom thought her girly tendencies the funniest thing ever, constantly teased her over them, but the last time he'd opened his big mouth, she'd gotten her own back by pointing out that his long black hair sure did look well conditioned.

The world's most funniest and easiest thing is to give an advice...

Very good, Mr.—?” “Robinson,” the boy supplied. Ms. Terwilliger produced a clipboard and scanned a list. “Ah, there you are. Robinson. Stephanie.” “Stephan,” corrected the boy, flushing as some of his friends giggled. Ms. Terwilliger pushed her glasses up her nose and squinted. “So you are. Thank goodness. I was just thinking how difficult your life must be with such a name. My apologies. I broke my glasses in a freak croquet accident this weekend, forcing me to bring my old ones today. So, Stephan-not-Stephanie, you’re correct. It’s a temple. Can you be more specific?” ... “Indeed it is,” she said. “And your name is?” “Sydney.” “Sydney …” She checked the clipboard and looked up in astonishment. “Sydney Melbourne? My goodness. You don’t sound Australian.” “Er, it’s Sydney Melrose, ma’am,” I corrected. Ms. Terwilliger scowled and handed the clipboard to Trey, who seemed to think my name was the funniest thing ever. “You take over, Mr. Juarez. Your youthful eyes are better than mine. If I keep at this, I’ll keep turning boys into girls and perfectly nice young ladies into the descendants of criminals.

He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world;

That’s the funniest thing of all about attraction. It can be so torturous, but you can look forward to it so much. It’s an exquisite kind of torment.

His rapier was at his belt, glittering as he swung. He reached down, ripped the sword clear. I jumped over a slashing frond of plasm, spun round with the water bottle in my hand. I hurled it across to Lockwood. George threw his rapier to me. Watch this now. Sword and bottle, sailing through the air, twin trajectories, arching beautifully through the mass of swirling tendrils towards Lockwood and me. Lockwood held out his hand. I held out mine. Remember I said there was that moment of sweet precision when we gelled perfectly as a team? Yeah, well. This wasn't it. The rapier shot past, missing me by miles. It skidded halfway across the floor. The bottle struck Lockwood plumb in the centre of his forehead, knocking him through the window. There was a moment's pause. 'Is he dead?' the skulls voice said 'Yay! Oh. No, he's hanging onto the shutters. Shame. Still, this is defiantly the funniest thing I've ever seen. You three really are incompetence on a stick

In the fifties... when they had their summer parties - there were always different colored lanterns on the lawn... and I get the funniest chill. In the end the bright colors always go out of life, have you noticed that? In the end, things always look gray, like a dress that's been washed too many times.

Call listened with amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.

Funniest thing about love, how it shakes loose when no one's looking. How the dark helps it along. Maybe that's why we dug caves so much, way back when.

I am willing to admit that Gerard Butler has single-handedly murdered the romantic comedy.” Gigi snickered. “Gerard Butler took the romantic comedy to an orgy, accidentally strangled it during an air game, panicked, and dumped its body in the woods.” I stared at her, gobsmacked. “That may be the funniest thing I've ever heard –” I spluttered. “How the hell do you even know what an air game is?” Gigi preened. “Just because you put the parental locks on HBO doesn’t mean I can’t get around them.

To what end the ‘world’ exists, to what end ‘man­kind’ exists, ought not to concern us at all for the moment except as objects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little human worm is the funniest thing at present on the world’s stage; on the other hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a ‘to this end’, an exalted and noble ‘to this end’ . Perish in pursuit of this and only this - I know of no better aim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, in pursuit of the great and the impossible. If, on the other hand, the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal - doctrines which I consider true but deadly - are thrust upon the people for another generation with the rage for instruction that has by now become normal, no one should be surprised if the people perishes of petty egoism, ossification and greed, falls apart and ceases to be a people; in its place sys­tems of individualist egoism, brotherhoods for the rapacious exploitation of the non-brothers, and similar creations of utilitarian vulgarity may perhaps appear in the arena of the future. To prepare the way for these creations all one has to do is to go on writing history from the standpoint of the masses and seeking to derive the laws which govern it from the needs of these masses, that is to say from the laws which move the lowest mud- and clay-strata of society. The masses seem to me to deserve notice in three respects only: first as faded copies of great men produced on poor paper with worn-out plates, then as a force of resistance to great men, finally as instruments in the hands of great men; for the rest, let the Devil and statistics take them!

Wait," I said looking around. "How do we get off of this thing and onto the island?" Criminy's mouth compressed into a thin line. Then his lips started to twitch. Then he started to shake. And then he cackled, head thrown back, as if it was the funniest joke he'd ever heard. "Darling, I have no idea whatsoever," he said, "I didn't think that far ahead.

It wasn't funny." "Oh, mon coeur. It was the funniest thing I've ever heard." "Jude!" she cried, stomping her foot before she realized she'd done it. "I'd kiss you now if I wasn't sure that you'd bit me." She would. She'd nip that obnoxious smile right off his face. "Now I know why you're so good at it. Kissing. You've had loads of practice.

Perhaps the funniest example is that of the Rev. Milton Barfoot, who said to Dan’s brother, in apparently honest bafflement, “But, isn’t Dan afraid of hell?” No, Reverend, Dan doesn’t believe in hell anymore, that’s one of the things about being an atheist, you see.

My Shadow I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow -- Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

When the meat platter was passed to me, I didn't even know what the meat was; usually, you couldn't tell, anyway-but it was suddenly as though _don't eat any more pork_ flashed on a screen before me. I hesitated, with the platter in mid-air; then I passed it along to the inmate waiting next to me. He began serving himself; abruptly, he stopped. I remember him turning, looking surprised at me. I said to him, "I don't eat pork." The platter then kept on down the table. It was the funniest thing, the reaction, and the way that it spread. In prison, where so little breaks the monotonous routine, the smallest thing causes a commotion of talk. It was being mentioned all over the cell block by night that Satan didn't eat pork.

When he didn’t move away, Sidney lowered her voice. “What are you doing?” Her sister and his brother were standing close by. Yet here he was, quite obviously leaning in toward her. He seemed amused by her question. “You’re always asking me that. I’m starting a conversation. Again.” He winked. Okay . . . “And how much have you had to drink tonight, Agent Roberts?” He laughed as if this was the funniest thing, and touched her chin. “Always busting my balls, Sinclair.

Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.

He laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. I roll my eyes and pretend not to notice how very bad he is at dancing or how adorable he looks when he throws his head back and chuckles. Luke Bryan comes on the radio. Boy am I in trouble.

Will she be the same?” The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.

Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple. "You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color.

How to Steal from Wall Street If you ever want to see a banker sweat, try this: walk into your bank, ask to see a salesperson, and ask to put your savings into index funds. It’s the funniest thing ever.

The funniest and nicest one in any room. Maybe more cartoon than human. The sort of person you lie awake imagining when you were younger, the kind of character I'd write into my life if I had any control over that sort of thing.

If you ask what is one of the funniest things in the world, I would say that the wrong traces left by a man hundreds or even thousands of years ago are naively followed by millions of people hundreds and even thousands of years later!

Josh Funk and Hunter Fraser: we haven't been in touch in years, but you made me feel like the funniest kid in the world. I would stay up late on school nights to write things to try to make you laugh the next day in class, and you inspired the one piece of advice on writing that I've ever felt qualified to give: write for the kid sitting next to you.

I said, “Will she be the same?” The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.

I'll sit on him,' Otis says and laughs like it's the funniest thing in the world. He twirls a small ball of fire in one hand and a Desert Eagle .50 Caliber in the other. If Seven didn't know him, he'd probably be running away as fast as he could. It's a big gun.

So why don’t you eat meat, Cam?” Jeremiah asked, stuffing half his burger into his mouth. Cam swallowed his water and said, “I’m morally opposed to eating animals.” Jeremiah nodded seriously. “But Belly eats meat. You let her kiss you with those lips?” Then he cracked up. Susannah and my mother exchanged a knowing kind of smile. I could feel my face getting hot, and I could feel how tense Cam was beside me. “Shut up, Jeremiah.” Cam glanced at my mother and laughed uneasily. “I don’t judge people who choose to eat meat. It’s a personal choice.” Jeremiah continued, “So you don’t mind when her lips touch dead animal and then touch your, um, lips?” Susannah chuckled lightly and said, “Jere, give the guy a break.” “Yeah, Jere, give the guy a break,” I said, glaring at him. I kicked him under the table, hard. Hard enough to make him flinch. “No, it’s fine,” Cam said. “I don’t mind at all. In fact-“ Then he pulled me to him and kissed me quickly, right in front of everyone. It was only a peck, but it was embarrassing. “Please don’t kiss Belly at the dinner table,” said Jeremiah, gagging a little for effect. “You’re making me nauseous.” My mother shook her head at him and said, “Belly’s allowed to kiss.” Then she pointed her fork at Cam. “But that’s it.” She burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing she’d ever said, and Susannah tried not to smile and told her to hush. I wanted to kill my mother and then myself. “Mom, please. You’re so not funny,” I said. “No more wine for Mom.” I refused to look anywhere near Jeremiah’s direction, or Cam’s, for that matter.

Shadow was stretched out full length on the seat in the back. He felt like two people, or more than two. There was part of him that felt gently exhilarated: he had done something. He had moved. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t want to live, but he did want to live, and that make all the difference. He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world; and he wondered if Laura would appreciate the joke.

So if I tell you I want to re-do our senior year in one day…to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and let you get to second base like two teenagers…” I erased the gap between us, kissing a sliver of his exposed neck, and his breath stilled. “And go eat at P.J. Clarke’s and move to third base in the bathroom…” I rasped the words against his hot flesh and dragged my eyes up to meet his stormy ones. “And end the day at a Broadway show where I’d do something very inappropriate under your seat…” We melted into each other, and sure enough, I felt the swelling in his slacks getting bigger against my stomach. “You’d say…no?” His face was the funniest thing on earth as it moved from surprised to eager, then finally to turned on. “Fuck,” he muttered, pressing his hard cock against me. From the outside, it must’ve looked like we were sharing the dirtiest hug ever. “I’m about to go ice-skating for a hand job, and I’m not even sixteen anymore.” “You’re totally going on a day date,” I joked. He rolled his eyes but followed me back outside and into the nearest subway station, buttoning his pea coat to cover the massive bulge between his legs. “Lead the way.

Ah, Antonio, it IS the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?"   "Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it. When he has furnished...

Tell me why you guys were laughing.” Clicking into my seat belt, I say, “At least once a week, Ms. Rothschild runs out to her car and spills hot coffee all over herself.” Kitty pipes up, “It’s the funniest thing in the world.” Peter snorts. “You guys are sadistic.” “What’s sadistic?” Kitty wants to know. She puts her head between us. I push her back and say, “Put your seat belt on.” Peter puts the car in reverse. “It means seeing other people in pain makes you happy.” “Oh.” She repeats it to herself softly. “Sadistic.” “Don’t teach her weird stuff,” I say. “I like weird stuff,” Kitty protests. Peter says, “See? The kid likes weird stuff.

Above the rustic stone fireplace was a deer's head-but not an everyday deer's head. This mangy thing surveyed the room with a huge toothy grin. Either he had died with a smile on his face or the taxidermist had had a rare sense of humor. But the funniest thing was that, somehow, the ridiculous creature seemed to fit the room perfectly.

I always get the funniest expressions from colleagues when I tell them that the best scientists understand that 2–3 percent of whatever it is they are studying is simply not quantifiable—it may be magic or aliens or random variance, none of which can be truly ruled out. If we are to be honest as scientists … we must admit there may be a few things that we are not supposed to know. I

Doris loves Superman as well.unfortunately, she got knocked down by a van last year, and it was a big, long recovery for her, really. It took about six months, didn't it, before she was fully back to normal. She never gone back to normal. She's got a bionic leg now, which made her twice as fast and twice as stupid. You know, but she's just such good fun. But anyway,like she had a bit of a low point, you know, when she got really fed up, you know, with those stupid lampshade collars, you know, that they have on their head. Ugh, bumping into everything, she was walking about sighing. Ugh, like that, you know, and if you've ever been known or been with the terriers, but that ball of energy,you know, and she wasn't allowed to be for a walk or anything. It was awful. So to cheer her up, I bought her a little Superman outfit for dogs. When you get home, you look online. They are absolutely brilliant. You can get Wonder Woman and Darth Vader, all sorts. They're the funniest thing I have ever seen in my. The front paws, the front legs go in Super man's legs, you know, and it like covers up the paw with these little, red boot things on the bottom. And it comes up and ties around the neck, and there's tube stuff down from the front. So from the front, it's like a tiny, little Superman with a dog's head. And then, on the back there's this cape. So when she trots around, it looks like she's flying! Ah, it's brilliant! And she loves it. I couldn't get it off for about a week. It's honestly, they're absolutely brilliant, you must check it out. So anyway, tonight this is for Doris.

I’d only just learned the term “gallows humor” a few months earlier, from a book we’d been assigned in American Literature about the Civil War. At the time, it wasn’t a type of humor I thought I would ever be in a position to experience. But now, as hearing Chén belt out Roddy Piper’s battle cry from They Live in Chinese struck me as one of the funniest things I’d ever heard in my life, I understood the concept perfectly.

Sol closed his eyes, tilted his head up for a moment before opening them and meeting my dazed gaze. He leaned his forehead against mine, and said the last thing I ever expected. "I've been searching my entire life for you." I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it that had to be the funniest thing anyone had ever said to me…ever. I rested my hand on my stomach, and was bent over at the waist when I heard him clear his throat. I looked up, immediately sobered and stood tall, staring him in the eye. "Does that line generally work well for you?" I asked with as straight a face as I could manage. He shifted his weight, raised his hands in mid-air and said, "Usually. Women tend to fall at my feet, and beg me to take them home." "Arrogance and egotism know no bounds, I see." "When you've lived as long as I have, you take your kicks where you can get them.

The Funniest Thing I See Everyday on Hello Poetry © Come on, get real! Who the fuck's going to steal ya' shit? Like some crackheads are going to break into your house and say, 'Hey esse, let's leave the plasma TV and gold jewelry. This fucking manuscript rhymes!' O.K., some of my shit is worth stealing This is my official New Yawk copyright symbol: ლ(©ー©ლ) It means ~ 'Eh, don't even fucking thinkabodit!' (Now, my symbol may actually fucking work. For reals, yo'!)

Hey Blake, how’s it hanging?” She questioned, looking through me at Blake, obviously ignoring my presence. She looked smug at the double meaning in her sentence. Blake furrowed his eyebrows. Brianna only talked to him on rare occasions when she bumped into us at my house. He must have been confused as to why she approached us in public, considering how she and I weren’t friends even in the slightest sense. Ignoring the fact that she was talking to Blake and not me, I spoke. “Longer than anything you’ve ever sucked.” Blake’s eyes widened for a second before he bit his lip to keep from laughing. Brianna turned toward me with cold eyes, her smile gone. “Not like you would know, Virgin Violet.” Her cohorts laughed and smiled like that was the funniest thing they had heard in their entire lives. “You know I really do admire you, Bri Bri.” I smiled sweetly, leaning forward as I placed my hand on her shoulder. “The fact that you’ve had so many fuck buddies this summer and still have not managed to contract some kind of STI or gotten pregnant really does inspire me.” I smirked wickedly. “At least from my knowledge you haven’t.” The look that came to her face made me want to buckle over with laughter. She looked flustered, angry, and embarrassed all at the same time. Maybe I hit a soft spot.

Jane, this young man is Jacob, my oldest son. It’s no secret that a headmistress’s biggest challenge is her family. Jacob, say hello to Jane.” “Hello to Jane,” he parroted, pulling out the pockets of his shorts in a silly curtsey. I couldn’t decide if it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen, or the funniest, so I stared back at him.

When we were done, we stripped the gloves off and high fived, grinning wickedly. “I can't wait to see his face,” Tory said and I nodded excitedly. A glint caught my eye and I glanced over Tory's shoulder, spotting Geraldine rubbing glitter into the crotch of Caleb's shorts. “Geraldine!” I gasped. “That's genius.” She beamed, folding the shorts away and zipping up the bag. “Those nincompoops won't know what hit them.” “Hurricane Geraldine hit them,” I said and she fell into frantic laughter, snorting intermittently. “Blazing ballerinas, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.” She snorted again and I couldn't help but join in with her laughter. “We’d better get out of here,” Tory said with a smirk and we headed after her. (darcy)

This reminds me of something funny Mama said the last time she came for a visit. I had taken her and the girls to an early morning swim meet, picking up some coffee and bagels on the way. Mama didn’t say a thing when I bought the food, but the funniest look came over her face when she bit into her bagel. “Well!” she said. “Whoever thinks this is good has clearly never tasted a biscuit!

I loooves free,” Ethan said. “Don’t we all, man,” Mac said. He looked at me, rubbing his fingers together. “Until we make the majors, we’re poor.” “Aren’t most college students?” I asked. “Yep. So we have movies, free music, what else?” “Library, free books,” I offered. All the guys laughed really loudly, like that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. But it was a good-natured laugh, not like they were making fun of me. Like maybe they thought I was really clever to offer free books. “My kid sister has this book called Free Stuff,” Mac said. “She sends away for all this junk: stickers, posters, booklets. She just loves getting mail.” “You guys must miss your families in the summer.” “Miss ’em all the time.” I didn’t ask why they didn’t go home for summer because I knew the answer: They loooves baseball.

You all are in a hopeless bind here. Standards are inescapable. Imposed standards are inescapable. You want to pretend that this is not the case, all the while vigorously telling us how you would impose them. The funniest thing about this is that you cannot see (or will not admit) what you are doing. We (conservative Christians) have a standard, we know the basis for it, and we are willing to live by it and defend it. You [progressives] have a standard, you are willing to impose it on the rest of us, but when called upon to defend or explain your standard (and why it is authoritative over all of us), you surround yourselves with a cloud of clichés. But no society can exist unless the adherents of the worldview in power are willing to act via the law as though the adherents of various minority views are just flat wrong. Just admit that this is what you are currently doing to us. The rest of your day will be sunny and filled with epistemic relief.

Marlboro Man answered, “Hello?” He must have been almost asleep. “Um…um…hi,” I said, squinting in shame. “Hey there,” he replied. “This is Ree,” I said. I just wanted to make sure he knew. “Yeah…I know,” he said. “Um, funniest thing happened,” I continued, my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel. “Seems I got a little turned around and I’m kinda sorta maybe perhaps a little tiny bit lost.” He chuckled. “Where are you?” “Um, well, that’s just it,” I replied, looking around the utter darkness for any ounce of remaining pride. “I don’t really know.” Marlboro Man assumed control, telling me to drive until I found an intersection, then read him the numbers on the small green county road sign, numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me, considering I’d never even heard the term “county road” before, but that would help Marlboro Man pinpoint exactly where on earth I was. “Okay, here we go,” I called out. “It says, um…CR 4521.” “Hang tight,” he said. “I’ll be right there.

Indeed, Ruhn said, “Wanna … hear a … joke?” The prince didn’t wait for a reply before he continued, “Two angels … and a Fae Prince … walk into … a dungeon …” Ruhn didn’t finish, and didn’t need to. A broken, rasping laugh came out of Hunt. Then Baxian. Then Ruhn. Though every heave shrieked through his arms, his back, his broken body, Hunt couldn’t stop laughing. The sound bordered on hysteria. Soon tears were leaking down his cheeks, and he knew from the scent that the others were laughing and crying as well, like it was the funniest fucking thing in the world. The door to the chamber banged open,

Funniest part of life “We judge others, not knowing our own mistakes. We advise others, not knowing we also need to follow. We gossip about others, not knowing others do gossip about us. We nag comparing others, not knowing we are far better than others. We say we are unlucky, not knowing how much lucky we are in terms of many things. We say no time, not knowing how much time we waste in reality. We say no money, not knowing how much is spent on unnecessary things. We don’t respect elders when we are young, not knowing we too get old. In life there are ‘known knowns”, ‘known unknowns’, ‘unknown unknowns’, but there are ‘knowingly unknowns’ which is the funniest part of life.

Do you know what a humanist is? My parents and grandparents were humanists, what used to be called Free Thinkers. So as a humanist I am honoring my ancestors, which the Bible says is a good thing to do. We humanists try to behave as decently, fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. My brother and sister didn't think there was one, my parents and grandparents didn't think there was one. It was enough that they were alive. We humanists serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community. I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke. How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?" But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.

It might be useful here to say a word about Beckett, as a link between the two stages, and as illustrating the shift towards schism. He wrote for transition, an apocalyptic magazine (renovation out of decadence, a Joachite indication in the title), and has often shown a flair for apocalyptic variations, the funniest of which is the frustrated millennialism of the Lynch family in Watt, and the most telling, perhaps, the conclusion of Comment c'est. He is the perverse theologian of a world which has suffered a Fall, experienced an Incarnation which changes all relations of past, present, and future, but which will not be redeemed. Time is an endless transition from one condition of misery to another, 'a passion without form or stations,' to be ended by no parousia. It is a world crying out for forms and stations, and for apocalypse; all it gets is vain temporality, mad, multiform antithetical influx. It would be wrong to think that the negatives of Beckett are a denial of the paradigm in favour of reality in all its poverty. In Proust, whom Beckett so admires, the order, the forms of the passion, all derive from the last book; they are positive. In Beckett, the signs of order and form are more or less continuously presented, but always with a sign of cancellation; they are resources not to be believed in, cheques which will bounce. Order, the Christian paradigm, he suggests, is no longer usable except as an irony; that is why the Rooneys collapse in laughter when they read on the Wayside Pulpit that the Lord will uphold all that fall. But of course it is this order, however ironized, this continuously transmitted idea of order, that makes Beckett's point, and provides his books with the structural and linguistic features which enable us to make sense of them. In his progress he has presumed upon our familiarity with his habits of language and structure to make the relation between the occulted forms and the narrative surface more and more tenuous; in Comment c'est he mimes a virtually schismatic breakdown of this relation, and of his language. This is perfectly possible to reach a point along this line where nothing whatever is communicated, but of course Beckett has not reached it by a long way; and whatever preserves intelligibility is what prevents schism. This is, I think, a point to be remembered whenever one considers extremely novel, avant-garde writing. Schism is meaningless without reference to some prior condition; the absolutely New is simply unintelligible, even as novelty. It may, of course, be asked: unintelligible to whom? --the inference being that a minority public, perhaps very small--members of a circle in a square world--do understand the terms in which the new thing speaks. And certainly the minority public is a recognized feature of modern literature, and certainly conditions are such that there may be many small minorities instead of one large one; and certainly this is in itself schismatic. The history of European literature, from the time the imagination's Latin first made an accommodation with the lingua franca, is in part the history of the education of a public--cultivated but not necessarily learned, as Auerbach says, made up of what he calls la cour et la ville. That this public should break up into specialized schools, and their language grow scholastic, would only be surprising if one thought that the existence of excellent mechanical means of communication implied excellent communications, and we know it does not, McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' notwithstanding. But it is still true that novelty of itself implies the existence of what is not novel, a past. The smaller the circle, and the more ambitious its schemes of renovation, the less useful, on the whole, its past will be. And the shorter. I will return to these points in a moment.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

BILL MURRAY, Cast Member: Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever. So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?” We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? Loretta was always a cranky old bitch. No sense of humor. Even when I was a kid she hated me. Thought I was a bad influence on her precious grandchild. Don’t know where she got that idea from. She moved out to Arizona years ago. Like a lot of women her age, she still enjoys a good tug on the slot machine—hence her frequent trips to Sin City. Apparently this is one such trip. Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on the road in front of me, I watched out for Leatherface while dialing Marlboro Man on my car phone. My pulse was rapid out of sheer terror and embarrassment; my face was hot. Lost and helpless on a county road the same night I’d emotionally decompensated in his kitchen--this was not exactly the image I was dying to project to this new man in my life. But I had no other option, short of continuing to drive aimlessly down one generic road after another or parking on the side of the road and going to sleep, which really wasn’t an option at all, considering Norman Bates was likely wandering around the area. With Ted Bundy. And Charles Manson. And Grendel. Marlboro Man answered, “Hello?” He must have been almost asleep. “Um…um…hi,” I said, squinting in shame. “Hey there,” he replied. “This is Ree,” I said. I just wanted to make sure he knew. “Yeah…I know,” he said. “Um, funniest thing happened,” I continued, my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel. “Seems I got a little turned around and I’m kinda sorta maybe perhaps a little tiny bit lost.” He chuckled. “Where are you?” “Um, well, that’s just it,” I replied, looking around the utter darkness for any ounce of remaining pride. “I don’t really know.” Marlboro Man assumed control, telling me to drive until I found an intersection, then read him the numbers on the small green county road sign, numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me, considering I’d never even heard the term “county road” before, but that would help Marlboro Man pinpoint exactly where on earth I was. “Okay, here we go,” I called out. “It says, um…CR 4521.” “Hang tight,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” Marlboro Man was right there, in less than five minutes. Once I determined the white pickup pulling beside my car was his and not that of Jason Voorhees, I rolled down my window. Marlboro Man did the same and said, with a huge smile, “Having trouble?” He was enjoying this, in the exact same way he’d enjoyed waking me from a sound sleep when he’d called at seven a few days earlier. I was having no trouble establishing myself as the clueless pansy-ass of our rapidly developing relationship. “Follow me,” he said. I did. I’ll follow you anywhere, I thought as I drove in the dust trail behind his pickup. Within minutes we were back at the highway and I heaved a sigh of relief that I was going to survive. Humiliated and wanting to get out of his hair, I intended to give him a nice, simple wave and drive away in shame. Instead, I saw Marlboro Man walking toward my car. Staring at his Wranglers, I rolled down my window again so I could hear what he had to say. He didn’t say anything at all. He opened my car door, pulled me out of the car, and kissed me as I’d never been kissed before. And there we were. Making out wildly at the intersection of a county road and a rural highway, dust particles in the air mixing with the glow of my headlights to create a cattle ranch version of London fog. It would have made the perfect cover of a romance novel had it not been for the fact that my car phone, suddenly, began ringing loudly.

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” Then he’s diving back into the limo, his face grayish, dazed, and totally sober. He stares at the floor. “No way that just happened.” Matthew and I look at each other hopefully, then we scramble to the window. Sure enough, in the driver’s seat of that big old Town Car is none other than Loretta P. Reinhart. Mom to George; Grandma to Steven. What are the fucking odds, huh? .... Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

Both C.K. and Bieber are extremely gifted performers. Both climbed to the top of their industry, and in fact, both ultimately used the Internet to get big. But somehow Bieber “made it” in one-fifteenth of the time. How did he climb so much faster than the guy Rolling Stone calls the funniest man in America—and what does this have to do with Jimmy Fallon? The answer begins with a story from Homer’s Odyssey. When the Greek adventurer Odysseus embarked for war with Troy, he entrusted his son, Telemachus, to the care of a wise old friend named Mentor. Mentor raised and coached Telemachus in his father’s absence. But it was really the goddess Athena disguised as Mentor who counseled the young man through various important situations. Through Athena’s training and wisdom, Telemachus soon became a great hero. “Mentor” helped Telemachus shorten his ladder of success. The simple answer to the Bieber question is that the young singer shot to the top of pop with the help of two music industry mentors. And not just any run-of-the-mill coach, but R& B giant Usher Raymond and rising-star manager Scooter Braun. They reached from the top of the ladder where they were and pulled Bieber up, where his talent could be recognized by a wide audience. They helped him polish his performing skills, and in four years Bieber had sold 15 million records and been named by Forbes as the third most powerful celebrity in the world. Without Raymond’s and Braun’s mentorship, Biebs would probably still be playing acoustic guitar back home in Canada. He’d be hustling on his own just like Louis C.K., begging for attention amid a throng of hopeful entertainers. Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile achievers throughout history. Socrates mentored young Plato, who in turn mentored Aristotle. Aristotle mentored a boy named Alexander, who went on to conquer the known world as Alexander the Great. From The Karate Kid to Star Wars to The Matrix, adventure stories often adhere to a template in which a protagonist forsakes humble beginnings and embarks on a great quest. Before the quest heats up, however, he or she receives training from a master: Obi Wan Kenobi. Mr. Miyagi. Mickey Goldmill. Haymitch. Morpheus. Quickly, the hero is ready to face overwhelming challenges. Much more quickly than if he’d gone to light-saber school. The mentor story is so common because it seems to work—especially when the mentor is not just a teacher, but someone who’s traveled the road herself. “A master can help you accelerate things,” explains Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and career coach behind the bestseller The Success Principles. He says that, like C.K., we can spend thousands of hours practicing until we master a skill, or we can convince a world-class practitioner to guide our practice and cut the time to mastery significantly.

What was the funniest thing you ever saw your children do?

What’s the basic way to catch a ghost in Luigi’s mansion: Dark Moon? a) Throw an Ectonet over it. b) Blast it with the ShadeShocker. c)     Stun it with a Strobulb, and then vacuum it into your Poltergust 5000. d)    Trap and store it in a Specter Snare. Name something that you can’t do with Poltergust 5000 a) Roll up a throw rug b)    Run very fast as you are propelled by a jet of water c) Vacuum up spiders and their webs d) Make a ceiling fan spin. These tough-looking spirits just want to give you a hand for your hard work. What do you call them? a) Sly Fives b) Clap Claps c) Slammers d) Slap Happies. Things aren’t always as they seem inside a hunting building. What tool helps you see objects hidden by Spirit Balls? a) Specter-o-scope b) Dark-light device c) De-illusionator d) Goggles of clarity. If you see a piece of furniture or a flowerpot shaking, what should you do? a) Press the X button b) Exercise caution c) Get ready to stun a ghost with your Strobulb d) All of the above. BONUS QUESTION: What does E stand for in Professor E. Gadd? a) Elvis b) Elvin c) Elroy d) Esteban. RESULTS: 0 out of 6 – Very, very very bad! You didn’t only ruin your mission of catching ghosts, but more of them came and they ate your I-scream. 1 out of 6 – Not bad! You did well enough that all of the ghosts moved out of your house. They ate your I-scream before they left. 2 out of 6 – Not too shabby! There ghosts are outside the house, and yup they ate your I-scream. 3 out of 6 – Not bad, but not good either. Let’s say you did manage to get ghosts outside the house, but your I-scream is eaten, and new ghosts won’t see you as a big threat. Get ready. 4 out of 6 – Nice! You must spend a lot of time in Gloomy Manor’s haunted library. It looks like you manage to read besides hunting ghosts. Also, you got an over-Boo notice. 5 out of 6 – Well done! You chase away ghosts so fast that you spend more time reading and improving your knowledge about these little pests. Are you an encyclopedia about ghosts or a human? 6 out of 6 – Excellent! You are the expert in catching and destroying ghosts. You could definitely help Luigi in tackling the

My mom was repainting our bathroom. My dad was standing behind her, frowning slightly. I stood by and listened to them squabble like two clucking hens. "You said yellow," my dad remarked. "I thought you meant a deep, dark yellow. This . . . this color . . . it's . . ." "It's called canary yellow," my mom answered. "Canary yellow?!" my dad repeated in disbelief. "What? Were they all out of banana yellow?" "Don't get wise," my mom replied sharply, her back to the doorway. Still, I could hear the smile in her voice. She enjoyed these little duels with my father. "It's too bright!" my dad said. "We'll all go blind! Think of the children, my darling. We'll need sunglasses just to go to the bathroom," my dad protested. "Oh, hush," my mom replied. And with a neat little twirl, she swiftly turned and dabbed paint on my father's nose. They both laughed like it was the funniest thing ever. Parents are so weird sometimes. Still, ya gotta love 'em, I guess. "Jigsaw!" my dad exclaimed. "How long have you been standing there?" "Long enough," I answered. "Maybe too long.

The one thing that hasn't changed around our house is our having a groundhog. Strange how he stayed on after Doc died since Mama and I have up growing vegetables. He just lives off grass these days, which makes me wonder why he had to bedevil poor Doc so much over his corn and tomatoes. I guess Doc's garden was just too tempting, like dangling a candy bar in front of a child. Of course, I don't know for sure that it's Big Tom, the GD groundhog himself, or just one of his children. But this groundhog sure is big and bodacious. And, you know, he does the funniest thing at twilight. He waddles out to the rose garden and lies down there, almost like he's looking for Doc. Maybe his is. I guess groundhogs don't know about flying south.

My father gets quite mad at me; my mother gets upset— when they catch me watching our new television set. My father yells, “Turn that thing off!” Mom says, “It’s time to study.” I’d rather watch my favorite TV show with my best buddy. I sneak down after homework and turn the set on low. But when she sees me watching it, my mother yells out, “No!” Dad says, “If you don’t turn it off, I’ll hang it from a tree!” I rather doubt he’ll do it, ‘cause he watches more than me. He watches sports all weekend, and weekday evenings too, while munching chips and pretzels—the room looks like a zoo. So if he ever got the nerve to hang it from a tree, he’d spend a lot of time up there— watching it with me.

Michael OToole hated going to school, He wanted to stay home and play. So he lied to his dad and said he felt bad And stayed home from school one day. The very next day he decided to say That his stomach felt a bit queasy. He groaned and he winced ‘til his dad was convinced, And he said to himself, “This is easy!” At the end of the week, his dad kissed his cheek And said, “Son, you’ve missed too much school.” “But still I feel funny, and my nose is all runny,” Said the mischievous Michael OToole. Each day he’d complain of a new ache or pain, But his doctor could find nothing wrong. He said it was best to let Michael rest, Until he felt healthy and strong. Michael OToole never did get to school, So he never learned how to write— Or to read or to spell or do anything well, Which is sad, for he’s really quite bright. And now that he’s grown, he sits home alone ‘Cause there’s nothing he knows how to do. Don’t be a fool and stay home from school, Or the same thing could happen to you!

rattled and rocked the theater. Considered one of the funniest movies of all time, it also sprinkled in unexpected doses of wisdom and insight. In one memorable scene, Curly, the gritty cowboy played by the late Jack Palance, and city slicker Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, leave the group to search for stray cattle. Although they had clashed for most of the movie, riding along together they finally connect over a conversation about life. Suddenly Curly reins his horse

Well, hang it all,’ he said, ‘he was only an atheist.’ ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,’ said the Inspector, politely. ‘He only wanted to abolish God,’ explained Father Brown in a temperate and reasonable tone. ‘He only wanted to destroy the Ten Commandments and root up all the religion and civilization that had made him, and wash out all the common sense of ownership and honesty; and let his culture and his country be flattened out by savages from the ends of the earth. That’s all he wanted. You have no right to accuse him of anything beyond that. Hang it all, everybody draws the line somewhere! And you come here and calmly suggest that a Mandeville Man of the old generation (for Craken was of the old generation, whatever his views) would have begun to smoke, or even strike a match, while he was still drinking the College Port, of the vintage of ’08 — no, no; men are not so utterly without laws and limits as all that! I was there; I saw him; he had not finished his wine, and you ask me why he did not smoke! No such anarchic question has ever shaken the arches of Mandeville College Funny place, Mandeville College. Funny place, Oxford. Funny place, England.’ ‘But you haven’t anything particular to do with Oxford?’ asked the doctor curiously. ‘I have to do with England,’ said Father Brown. ‘I come from there. And the funniest thing of all is that even if you love it and belong to it, you still can’t make head or tail of it.’ The

What is your name?” “Celaena Sardothien,” she ground out. The skull barked a laugh. “Oh, that is too funny! The funniest thing I’ve heard in centuries!” “Be quiet.” “My name is Mort, if you must know.

The funniest thing about life is when we walk on the uncertain road called life, we act as if the path is certain! Why? Because we are terrified of uncertain paths!

Old people poke me at weddings and tell me “your next” So I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Horror director, Eli Roth, showed villagers in a remote native village deep in the Peruvian Amazon the controversial 1980 horror film "Cannibal Holocaust". The villagers thought it was a comedy and the funniest thing they've ever seen.

To make matters worse, the Starlight Captain, Quentin, got to them before we could and he offered them a teasing bow and a smile which made me want to knock his teeth out. Which I intended to do as soon as the second half started. The girls both laughed at something he said, smiling like he was the funniest fucking dipshit they’d ever met. Roxy’s dark eyes moved to mine and I felt a lurch right in the centre of my gut for a half a second as it seemed almost like she was directing that smile at me. She’d made a dress out of an oversized Pitball shirt which skimmed her thighs and made her look like she'd just crawled out of my bed and pulled it on. The idea of that excited me way more than it should have but as she turned to whisper something to her sister, I saw the name printed across the back of her shirt wasn’t Acrux, it was Grus. Of course it is. Stop thinking with your dick and get your head back in the game! The Starlight Captain noticed us approaching and made himself scarce but I noted the lingering looks the twins gave him as he jogged away. “Enjoying the game, sweetheart?” Caleb asked as we drew close enough to speak with them. I didn’t miss the way Roxy’s eyes trailed over him and the fact that there was considerably less hatred in her gaze when she looked his way than what she directed at me. I guessed he hadn’t half drowned her but it still pissed me off. “We are,” she admitted with a wide smile. “Isn’t Geraldine amazing?” “Yeah she’s the fucking cat's pyjamas,” I growled, wishing I could actually aim an insult the Cerberus’s way but that girl was single handedly saving our asses from total annihilation at this point so I couldn’t even pretend to do it. Without her we would have been royally screwed. “Maybe she should be the Captain,” Gwendalina suggested with a taunting smile. “Maybe she should,” Lance agreed loudly and I scowled at my friend. There was no way he’d offer me any loyalty when it came to Pitball. If I wasn’t the best then he’d say it to my face. I just wished he’d hold his opinion back in front of the Vegas. “I just need a quick top up,” Caleb said and Roxy didn’t even fucking flinch at that. She sighed like him biting her was a goddamn inconvenience and pulled her long hair over her shoulder to offer him access to her neck. “You’d better hurry up,” she added. “Only two minutes of half time left.” I glanced around at the board to confirm what she’d said and by the time I looked back, Caleb had her in his arms and his teeth were in her throat. She didn’t even have the decency to look horrified, her fingers twisting into his hair as he held her in place. His fucking hand was on her thigh, skimming the hem of that shirt and for a moment I actually wanted to rip his arm off. I shook my head and turned away from them. This anger with Milton was spilling into everything I did today. I just couldn’t believe that he’d done such a thing to me. He was one of my most loyal followers, I’d never even sensed an inch of defiance in him let alone a betrayal of this magnitude and I couldn’t get it out of my head. If I couldn’t trust someone as devoted as him then who the hell could I trust? My gaze skimmed over the box above the twins where my parents were sitting but I didn’t let it linger there. If I saw the look of frustration and disappointment I knew would be on my father’s face then I really would lose the plot. Caleb released Roxy, leaning close to whisper something in her ear which made her fucking laugh while I ground my teeth. He spared a moment to heal the bite on her neck and we turned back to the pitch. “I hope you do better this half!” Gwen called after us. “You can’t do any worse, right?” Roxy added and I clenched my fists to stop myself from rounding on them. (Darius POV)

The house is in moderate condition, but when we do the usual dance of exploring the price range, the agent clarifies that the owner has high expectations. The owner interjects and I hear the full story from the man himself. ‘My house has been valued at a million,’ he says with a grin. ‘Though I’ve been told it might be worth more than that. Would you believe it only cost me a year’s income back in the eighties? Had three children and never had to worry about money or a place to live. And now the value of it just keeps going up! It’s unbelievable what people have to pay for houses these days. Never would have imagined it.’ He cackles at this, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.

To the dads who think they’re the funniest person in the room—and sometimes, they actually are! Whether you're telling those classic dad jokes, giving life advice that sounds suspiciously like a punchline, or fixing things in ways only you understand, you bring humor to every situation. Today’s your day to kick back, relax, and maybe even laugh at your own jokes. You’re the kings of comedy in our hearts. Enjoy your day, you hilarious legends!

Call listened with some amusement—not that the incident hadn’t been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn’t reach deep.

That’s Jimmy, and that’s the cat, and that’s Patrick and me. And that’s you,” explains Parvaneh. When she says that last bit she points at a figure in the middle of the drawing. Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color,” says Parvaneh.

The Funniest Thing I See Everyday on Hello Poetry © Come on, get real! Who the fuck is going to steal your shit? Like some crackheads are going to break into your house and say, 'Hey ese, let's leave the plasma TV and gold jewelry. This fucking manuscript rhymes!

I didn’t know what to do, so I called Ken Kesey and laid out the situation. “Hey Ken, funniest thing happened … Shelley accidentally put LSD in her right eye.” He didn’t miss a beat: “Right on, Bill. Put it in your left eye and have a good time. Bye.

​“You were with men too long,” I said. “You haven’t found the right woman. Take the dominatrixes at Enthrall. They’re true babes in every sense of the word. They’re smart and funny and sassy and super sexy. Why, I’ll introduce you to one of them, if you like. Not lady Penny, though. She’s married. You might like Mistress Scarlet. She scares the hell out of me, but I think you’d like her.” His gaze stayed on me for the longest time. “You’re the funniest thing I’ve ever met.

Know ahead of time that with some audiences you can say anything and they’ll 81 think it’s the funniest thing ever, and other times you’re wondering whether you’re speaking to a group of corpses at a coffin convention. Don’t worry: You’re getting through. The culture of every group will simply be different.

So many to choose from,” he answered. “But let’s see. I guess the most recent is this one old guy who keeps calling us for the same issue. We keep telling him he’s fine, but every time we have to take him into the ED anyway.” He set his soup bowl down on the table and ran a hand through his hair. “What’s his issue?” “Beets.” “Beets?” “Yeah, apparently he keeps stealing beets from his neighbor’s garden and they turn his pee bright pink. He thinks he’s dying. But no, it’s just the beets. Last time we were there, the neighbor came running after him with a rake. Funniest thing ever, watching two eighty-year-old dudes trying to wrestle each other to the ground.

Know ahead of time that with some audiences you can say anything and they’ll think it’s the funniest thing ever, and other times you’re wondering whether you’re speaking to a group of corpses at a coffin convention. Don’t worry: You’re getting through. The culture of every group will simply be different.

As we flew through the air, Aries shrieked. If we all survive, he’s never living that down. Behind us, Madman was laughing like this was the funniest thing in the world, and Sir Mix-a-Lot was still aggressively campaigning the perks of big booties. We

Steven’s words slush together as he gets to his feet. “Crossing this one off the bucket list.” Then he unbuckles his belt and grabs the waist of his pants—yanking the suckers down to his ankles—tighty whities and all. Every guy in the car holds up his hands to try to block the spectacle. We groan and complain. “My eyes! They burn!” “Put the boa constrictor back in his cage, man.” “This is not the ass I planned on seeing tonight.” Our protests fall on deaf ears. Steven is a man on a mission. Wordlessly, he squats and shoves his lilywhite ass out the window—mooning the gaggle of grannies in the car next to us. I bet you thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. He grins while his ass blows in the wind for a good ninety seconds, ensuring optimal viewage. Then he pulls his slacks up, turns around, and leans out the window, laughing. “Enjoying the full moon, ladies?” Wow. Steven usually isn’t the type to visually assault the elderly. Without warning, his crazy cackling is cut off. He’s silent for a beat, then I hear him choke out a single strangled word. “Grandma?” .... Matthew and I wave and smile and in fourth-grader-like, singsong harmony call out, “Hi, Mrs. Reinhart.” She shakes one wrinkled fist in our direction. Then her poofy-haired companion in the backseat flips us the bird. I’m pretty sure it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. The two of us collapse back into our seats, laughing hysterically.

Dad’s mad at me, I can tell. He has been glaring at me all afternoon. Pete stares at me, too, but in a completely different way. He shed his shirt about two hours ago, and he walked over to me carrying a bottle of sunscreen Gonzo’s mom gave him. Dad intercepted him, though, and spun him around to rub sunscreen on his shoulders himself. Pete let him. It was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. When Dad finished, he slapped Pete’s naked shoulder really hard and pointed him back toward the group of hearing-impaired kids who had just arrived at the pool.

I have the funniest story today Diary! There was a trainer looking for Pokémon at the entrance to my cave and he was a big, mean looking man with a funny golden ear-ring and a bandana with a bunch of blue stripes on it!   “Come out, come out, little Pokémon!” the man had said as he shined his flashlight around the cave. It was the funniest thing to see him searching around on his hands and knees, looking for Pokémon under rocks even!   I thought it would be fun to scare him even more than normal, so I decided to float upside down right behind him and tap him on the shoulder.   When he turned around he shouted super loud and ran off as fast as he could, leaving his bandana and earring behind too! That made me laugh for hours and hours.

Be this as it may, I make a rule of entering a monkey as speedily as possible after hoisting my pendant; and if a reform takes place in the table of ratings, I would recommend a corner for the "ship's monkey," which should be borne on the books for "full allowance of victuals," excepting only the grog; for I have observed that a small quantity of tipple very soon upsets him; and although there are few things in nature more ridiculous than a monkey half-seas over, yet the reasons against permitting such pranks are obvious and numerous. When Lord Melville, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to my great surprise and delight, put into my hands a commission for a ship going to the South American station, a quarter of the world I had long desired to visit, my first thought was, "Where now shall I manage to find a merry rascal of a monkey?" Of course, I did not give audible expression to this thought in the First Lord's room; but, on coming down-stairs, I had a talk about it in the hall with my friend, the late Mr. Nutland, the porter, who laughed, and said,— "Why, sir, you may buy a wilderness of monkeys at Exeter 'Change." "True! true!" and off I hurried in a Hackney coach. Mr. Cross, not only agreed to spare me one of his choicest and funniest animals, but readily offered his help to convey him to the ship. "Lord, sir!" said he, "there is not an animal in the whole world so wild or fierce that we can't carry about as innocent as a lamb; only trust to me, sir, and your monkey shall be delivered on board your ship in Portsmouth Harbour as safely as if he were your best chronometer going down by mail in charge of the master.

The Telepathic Watch A man walks into a bar and sits down beside an attractive woman, but barely glances her direction. Instead, he looks at his watch and gets an expression on his face as if he were listening to something. “Are you expecting someone?” the woman asked. “Is your date late?” “Oh, no, I’m not expecting anyone,” the man said, “but I just bought this watch and I’m testing it. You see, it’s a telepathic watch that not only tells the time but also tells me things about people nearby. For example, it’s telling me now that you’re not wearing any panties.” The woman giggled and said, “Well, your watch is broken, I think, because I am indeed wearing panties.” “Just as I thought,” the man said. “It’s running an hour fast.

The funniest thing about time is that you don’t ever really notice it until you’re waiting for something to happen.

Marabela always says that things are funniest when they have hints of truth to them. Perhaps, he thinks, they’re also saddest when that truth has faded. Enough putting

I see my door open, and Emily stalks out. She’s wearing my shirt, and it comes down to her knees. She stomps into the kitchen, and I see her lips moving, but I can’t catch a word. She goes to the drawer, takes a handful of condoms and carries them back to the room, mumbling to herself the whole way. When she gets to the door, she holds them out like a prize and says, “Do you think this is enough?” Then she goes into the bedroom and slams the door behind her. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Paul says. He drops back heavily against the couch. “I didn’t mean for her to hear me. “Why is that she always hears me when I don’t want her to hear me? Fuck,” he breathes. Matt’s doubled over with laughter. “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” He points at Paul. “She’s so pissed.” He shoves my shoulder. “You’ll be lucky if you get laid at all.” He laughs like hell. I can’t figure out what’s so funny. They probably just ruined my night. “You are not amusing,” I say. But a grin tugs at my lips, too. Damn, she was pissed. But she just solved my problem. “Now we have condoms. A lifetime supply. Are you happy?

The funniest thing people say to me: "I wish I had your life". Hello! I make a living writing about it.

Dear Children, I am your dad. The father of all five of you pale creatures. Given how attractive and fertile your mother is, there may be more of you by the time you read this book. If you are reading this, I am probably dead. I would assume this because I can honestly foresee no other situation where you’d be interested in anything I’ve done. Right now, you are actually more interested in preventing me from doing things like working, sleeping, and smiling. I’m kidding, of course. Kind of. I love you with all of my heart, but you are probably the reason I’m dead. All right, you didn’t kill me. Your mother did. She kept getting pregnant! I don’t know how. Don’t think about it. It will give you the willies. At one point, I was afraid she got pregnant while she was pregnant. She was so fertile I didn’t even let her hold avocados. Anyway, this is a book all about what I observed being your dad when you were very young and I had some hair back in good old 2013. So why a book? Well, since you’ve come into my life, you’ve been a constant source of entertainment while simultaneously driving me insane. I felt I had to write down my observations about you in a book. And also for money, so you could eat and continue to break things. By the way, I’m sorry I yelled so much and did that loud clapping thing with my hands. I hated when my dad would do the loud clapping thing with his hands, so every time I do the loud clapping thing, it pains me in many ways. Most of the pain is because that loud clapping thing actually hurts my hands. You may be wondering how I wrote this book. From a very early age, you all instinctively knew I wasn’t that bright of a guy. Probably from all the times you had to correct me when I couldn’t read all the words in The Cat in the Hat. Hell, I find writing e-mails a chore. (Thank you, spell-check!) I wrote this book with the help of many people, but mostly your mother. Your mother is not only the only woman I’ve ever loved, but also the funniest person I know. When your mom was not in labor yelling at me, she made me laugh so hard. Love, Dad P.S. How did you get that hula hoop into that restaurant Easter 2011? Who’s Who in the Cast Jim Gaffigan (Dad).

Liz. Are you going to come out?” “No.” “You’re going to have to come out, honey, sooner or later.” “Later, maybe.” “Okay, I’ll wait.” Another thirty minutes passed before there was a second knock. “Liz, please come out.” “I don’t think I can.” “I wish you had stuck around to see the look on Dad’s face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that look before in my entire life.” There was a chuckle. “Chase, this isn’t funny.” “Actually,” he responded through muffled cracks in his voice, “it’s perhaps the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

I guess what I’ve learnt is lots of us (me included) try to change the things that make us, well, us. But we shouldn’t, we should just embrace it. It is crazy that I have only just realised that as I’ve got older, even though I read these words as a young child so many times: ‘Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you’er than you.’ I have a lot to thank Dr Seuss for.

Funniest thing, I got all the way to that spring house then plumb forgot what I’d—” Tempy stopped in her tracks and looked between the two of them. Then slowly looked up. Jake followed her gaze, as did Aletta, and he saw a sprig of mistletoe hanging above them. He smiled, but Aletta only looked back at him, her expression saying she wasn’t yet convinced. But that was all right. He had a little time yet. And though Aletta Prescott didn’t know it, he could be awfully persuasive when he put his mind to it. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, lingering only a second before he turned and walked out the door, tossing Tempy a discreet wink.

And pick up the pieces when he actually falls in love with her and it all becomes real.” Robbie laughed as if it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “Just think, you could actually fall for the person you’re marrying.

we can do about getting you bailed … blah, blah, blah … But before we get into all that just explain one thing for me, yeah?’ As he pauses, my brow furrows in anticipation. ‘You’re my brief, innit?’ ‘I am indeed your legal representative.’ ‘And that means I can ask you anything I like, yeah?’ My brow furrows further. Soon my entire upper face will be one huge wrinkle. ‘Is there some specific aspect of your case you’d like to talk about, Mr Nazeeb?’ ‘Not about my case, about you, blood. No offence but … how comes you, a black geezer, talks like a posh white geezer? Is your mum the queen or something?’ He laughs heartily as though this is the funniest joke he’s ever heard. ‘Dude, you don’t sound nuthin’ like any of the black geezers from round my ends and it’s proper doing my head in. What’s your story?’ One might assume that given Mr Nazeeb is being held in custody for attacking a rival drug dealer with a baseball bat, is looking at a five-year sentence, has already had an appeal for bail turned down and is facing a second in just twenty-five minutes, he would be a tad more focused on his current situation. But to make such an assumption about the twenty-seven-year-old Asian man sitting across the table from me (dressed head to toe in his drug-dealing street uniform of baseball cap, black North Face jacket, grey sweatshirt, matching jogging bottoms and bright white box-fresh trainers), one would need to be ignorant of a truth of which I have long been painfully aware: that little frustrates the human brain so much as an inability to immediately pigeonhole complete strangers. And for the man sitting across from me in a dingy conference room at Westminster Magistrates Court the question of why I, as a thirty-four-year-old criminal barrister with light-brown skin, Caribbean heritage and a three-piece pinstripe suit, don’t drop my aitches is, it would appear, of greater priority than even personal liberty. It is a phenomenon unbounded not only by race but