Expand your sense of humor with fast quotes, quick wit, convenient clichés, wisdom, fun and clever ideas.

Enjoy hundreds of select quips from comics, classics, editorials, bumper stickers and anonymous sayings. Some are from real life, honest!

Discover the most snarky, smiley, sanctimonious, sentimental, sacred, irreverent, tender, cheeky and enduring short funny punches. These off-beat quotes, pithy adages and short humorous poems cover every imaginable topic, vision and viewpoint.

Escape now into the world of SMIRK.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

If you’re too open-minded, your brains will fall out.

Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

If you’re going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it!

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.

Yep, there is a free lunch. If you can find a quote, cliche or quip in the original, Volume #1 SMIRK book that is also the same quote, cliche or quip appearing in Volume #2 SMIRK.

Keep your eyes open as you read the SMIRKs with pen at hand. When you get a sneaky feeling that you’ve already read a certain item in the other SMIRK book, write down the duplicated quote, cliche, or quip, the page numbers and paragraphs (count from the top of pages down) for each volume. Also the duplicated item. Are they identical? Mail information to M. Gregory, SMIRK, 833 Alpha Lane, Prescott, AZ 86303. Include your name, postal address, e.mail address and phone number with all the exact details.
When we find that your information checks out we’ll blush with embarrassment and immediately mail you a certificate for a Free Lunch at a nationally recognized restaurant (fast food franchise) along with a document, suitable for framing; validating your razor-sharp mental powers. Thanks for playing!

What goes on back stage in a comedy club is pretty much like high school. Plenty of back-biting, mud-slinging and nasty digs. Stand up comedians say that comedy is actually a blood sport. They steal each other’s one-liners, pilfer another comic’s gestures and then adapt the stuff to their own style. They hide the other guy’s props, like the rubber chicken that’s essential in the act of the next artist who is up to go on stage. Just a bunch of high-strung kids!
Most of us Americans feel and think we have a terrific sense of humor. The actual lack of a sense of humor is considered a fatal personality failing. A person is considered incomplete without a funny bone. We may admit that we can’t play golf or sing or cook, but we will never confess to the lack of a sense of humor.
A reviewer said that Will Rogers was what Americans think other Americans are like. With an Oklahoma drawl Will Rogers said, “We are the first nation on earth to ride to the poor house in an automobile.” That was during the menacing Depression of the 1930s.
Humor includes gestures to help, without any words, in many performers’ acts. Johnny Carson was a terrific joke-teller, but he did prat falls when his late night TV show was young, just to be sure. Later he developed gestures that became his signature—the audience was primed for some razor-sharp witticism when he leaned back in his chair with his arms clasped behind his head. Part of his humor was that moment when he collapsed in laughter, his head going forward to hit the desk. There was the gracious host quality of the man when he would suppress his own laughter in order to give his guest center stage.

A man slips on a banana peel or falls down an open manhole —that is one of the oldest and funniest gags in comedy’s joke book. The art of walking entails a simple pattern of putting one foot in front of the other. Once you master it, you unconsciously accomplish it forever more. When you stumble, the pattern is broken. In that startling moment you realize “Hey, I’m still here. Oh, m’gosh!”

The violent physical actions characteristic of slapstick usually inflict no permanent damage. Old fashioned Punch and Judy puppet shows and the Three Stooges all demonstrate this art, with no bloodshed, but lots of slaps and punches…followed by lots of laughter.

Wisecracks are fast and fun, too. “She has more money than she can afford.” Shakespeare projected use of the word “crack”, with “break” used in his jests. A witcracker was consequently someone who made jests or cracked jokes. Most of us feel that wisecracks are even-tempered insults or witticisms that really exaggerate. Ridiculing someone’s unique traits by using an absurd illustration feels OK. The nonsensical becomes the ordinary through fantasy…truth has no importance here. Dorothy Parker, on the other hand, a lady who knew what she was snarling about, described wisecracks as being calisthenics.

What we need is a good universal swearword.Someone invented WAXYQUEZ to do the job. A tad difficult to pronounce, but it is composed of a few letters that aren’t used frequently: Q. W.X.Y and Z. It was fabricated by Paul Dickson, a wordsmith with high credentials who rambles on about the American language, baseball and 20th century history. He saw it as a good version of the five letters banned from Esperanto, an artificial auxiliary language, which failed to become universally popular. Esperanto was invented in 1887 as a means of making international communication easier. It is based on the root forms of certain words common to the major European languages. The newly created language’s name translates “one who hopes.” It was a good idea but it didn’t catch on. Neither did the all-purpose cuss word.

You solved a sticky mess by using your own unique humor? How DID you do that? What was so troublesome to begin with?

Right now I’m writing a book about how humor gets the way it is and how the funny stuff works. Care to share a predicament at work, at home or among friends that was tidied up by using a joke, a trick, a few weird words or some rancid sarcasm? It could be perfect for one of the chapters in “What’s so %$#! Funny?” and your name would get credit in my book. In case you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s OK.

I, for one, have bought an energy bar because the wrapper said it was fortified with optimism. The nutritional value was secondary. Do you respond to that sort of an ad? What wonders has humor worked in your life these days?

What’s been going on? Write away on COMMENT…I’ll get right back to you. Honest!
AF

One of the healthiest things you can have up your sleeve is a funny bone !

“Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are depressing,” so said E.B. White. So why analyze it? Laughter, smiles and humor usually come to us by way of love, anger, lousy cooking, winning or losing, being a tad naughty or by U.S. Postal Service.
How about the way the British have of defining certain athletes as Boxingers? Huh? It’s sort of logical. In the USA we have Boxing, so let’s go with Boxingers on the sports pages. It’s amusing to us because it’s an unexpected word. They say that humor results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is inveigled between them. Boom !