General wittiness

• Ships in the Night
  By Lawrence Bush, Accord, N.Y.

  I had only just arrived at the club when I bumped into Roger. After we had exchanged a few pleasantries, he lowered his voice and asked, "What do you think of Martha and I as a potential twosome?"

  "That," I replied, "would be a mistake. Martha and me is more like it."
  "You're interested in Martha?"
  "I'm interested in clear communication."
  "Fair enough," he agreed. "May the best man win." Then he sighed. "Here I thought we had a clear path to becoming a very unique couple."

  "You couldn't be a very unique couple, Roger."
  "Oh? And why is that?"
  "Martha couldn't be a little pregnant, could she?"
  "Say what? You think that Martha and me...."
  "Martha and I."
  "Oh." Roger blushed and set down his drink. "Gee, I didn't know."
  "Of course you didn't." I assured him. "Most people don't."
  "I feel very badly about this."
  "You shouldn't say that: I feel bad...."
  "Please, don't, " Roger said. "If anyone's at fault here, it's me!"
  
  
  

• In 1998, the Iranian government declared that it would not carry out the death sentence against Salman Rushdie, and so Rushdie came out from hiding. Soon afterwards, this was posted to a Minneapolis-Saint Paul area bulletin board system:

  Salman Rushdie plans to release another book soon. It's tentatively titled, "Buddha, You Fat Slob".
  
  
  

• A friend was complaining that her boyfriend would not say "I love you," even if explicitly asked to do so. The only exception, she said, was when they were in fact in the act of making love. Then, if asked, he would say the sacred words.

  I suggested that she should not take too much comfort in the exception. When making love, I explained, men will say anything.

  "He'd tell you he's the Easter Bunny if that's what he thinks you want to hear," I told her. The conversation rattled on from there.

  A couple of weeks later, she related the following.

  "We were in bed, making love. I said, 'Tell me you love me.' He said, 'I love you.' I said 'Tell me you're the Easter Bunny.' He stopped for a second, and said, 'I'm the Easter Bunny.' So I slapped him."

  The poor guy probably still doesn't know what happened.
  
  
  

• One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional wrestler. Once when he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only force could change the German's views.

  In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then asked the youth, "_Now_ do you believe that force won't change people's views?"

  "Heck no!" the local boy hollered back.

  "That's exactly my point," said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left.
  
  
  

• Actual listing in the TV section of the Marin (CA) Independent-Journal:

  Movie "The Wizard of Oz": Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.
  
  
  

• Gay Court is, or used to be, a street in the megabucks San Francisco suburb of Alamo. The county board of supervisors, citing homosexual implications, social stigma and ridicule, officially changed the name of the thoroughfare to High Eagle Road. [...]

  Local gay activists responded with ingenuity and aplomb, announcing that Bay Area homosexuals would henceforth refer to themselves not as "gays" but as "high eagles."