Good puns

Some very clever puns:

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The flight attendant looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, 'Dam!'

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says, 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why they asked, as they moved off. 'Because,' he said, 'I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.'

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, 'They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal.'

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And, finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Amazing statistics on reading

Here are some amazing statistics:

* 58% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
* 42% of college graduates never read another book after college.
* 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
* 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
* 57% of new books are not read to completion.
* Most readers don't get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.
* A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.
* A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies.
* A New York Times bestseller sells 250,000 copies.
* On average, a bookstore browser spends 8 seconds looking at a book's front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
* Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.

Source: Parapublishing.com

Earth Viewed From Books

This is way cool! A developer at Google has created a map of the Earth viewed from books, which shows how often a location is mentioned in the books in Google Book Search.

We've all seen views of the Earth from space, where the numerous pinpoints of light on the ground combine to yield a speckled map of the world. I wanted to show the Earth viewed from books, where individual mentions of locations in books combine to yield another interpretation of the globe. The intensity of each pixel is proportional to the number of times the location at a given set of coordinates is mentioned across all of the books in Google Books Search.

How cool is that?!

Tech Support for Books

Pretty funny.

Strange Conversation by Kris Delmhorst

This is a CD, not a book - but fits the literary theme because the lyrics for the songs are either poems or inspired by poems by Browning, Eliot, Whitman, and others. I heard about this CD through an interview with the singer/songwriter on NPR a few months ago, and this weekend, I finally got around to buying it. And I really enjoyed it. The music is folksy, but has good variety, and I like most of the poems - especially the Whitman. It's a very fun CD.

Washington Post word play

Another in the "too good not to post" category. Words sorta fit the book theme...
The second section is even funnier and more clever (cleverer??) than the first. (scroll down.)

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are as follows:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting,or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:

1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.
8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
9. Karmageddon (n): It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
10. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.
12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

Classy Insults

Some of these are too good not to post - and since many are by authors, they kinda fit the book blog theme:

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new Play, bring a friend... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second...if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill
"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill (about Clement Attlee)
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop
"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb
Exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." He responded, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson
"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating
"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E. Leonard
"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed
"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." - James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand
"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain
"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins

I’m not a poetry connoisseur, but I really enoyed this collection. The poems are clever, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes humorous.

The Soul Sessions by Joss Stone

The story is that she was about to record yet another “Britney Spears wannabe CD” when she heard some of the classics of soul and she changed direction. This CD is fantastic. It’s hard to believe this is a 16-yr old British girl.