The Funny Side of Writing

I was just sitting down to write this morning when I got an email from my friends at Trapdoor Books, publisher of tech fiction such as the Ninth Avatar and CyberKill. When it started with the word ‘Humor’, I decided to check it out before starting my writer’s day. They’re worth passing on:

A visitor to a certain college paused to admire the new Hemingway Hall that had been built on campus.
“It’s a pleasure to see a building named for Ernest Hemingway,” he said. “Actually,” said his guide, “it’s named for Joshua Hemingway. No relation.”
The visitor was astonished. “Was Joshua Hemingway a writer, also?”
“Yes, indeed,” said his guide. “He wrote a check.”

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. “In English,” he said, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.
She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.
“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”
A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.
“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”
“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.
When asked to define great, he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!”
He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

A screenwriter comes home to a burned down house. His sobbing and slightly-singed wife is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the man asks.
“Oh, John, it was terrible,” she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in a second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is–”
“Wait, wait. Back up a minute,” The man says. “My agent called?”

The wife of novelist and critic William Dean Howells once enlisted the aid of a young maid. One day the new assistant – having noticed her husband’s constant presence in the home – asked to speak with Mrs. Howells.”You pay me four dollars a week, madam,” she began. “I’m afraid I really can’t afford to pay you more,” Mrs. Howells interrupted apologetically. “Well, what I was wanting to say, madam,” the girl continued, “is that I would be willing to take three until Mr. Howells lands a job.”

A critic once castigated Winston Churchill for composing a sentence which ended with a preposition. Churchill replied with a mocking note: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

Famed British humorist Alan Coren was once advised that anyone seeking to draw the attention of the book-buying public should write about cats, golf or Nazis. Coren promptly published a collection of essays entitled Golfing for Cats. Its cover? A picture of a cat in a Nazi uniform wielding a putter.

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