JestReport’s Wit List
The goal of JestReport’s Wit List is to record Jokes, Anecdotes, and Witticisms that I’ve written for my stand-up, funny remarks I’ve made, and funny things I’ve overheard other people say. The list is – by its nature – uneven; some things are funny, some things are not (though at one time perhaps I thought they were or the misfires are there to mediate expectations of the reader). I’ve also included comic riffs that are necessarily longer.
I try to give credit to the person who actually said the funny remark – if not me, so this undertaking is not entirely narcissistic. I hope at some future date that Jest Report’s Wit List will have a compilation of 100,000 original humorous sayings from not just myself, but from people around the country. This list would not be unlike Ambrose Bierce’s ‘The Devil’s Dictionary,’ a satirical list which offered reinterpretations of terms in the English language.
I would also like to create an online version of the famed Algonquin Round Table of 1920’s New York where the wits of their day Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, et al. traded wisecracks and one-liners over cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel. “Hey you there in the hipster part of town in Milwaukee or the sleepy suburbs of Kansas, pour yourself a cocktail and send me something funny!”
Please add an original humorous joke or saying by comment below, and if it’s acceptable, I will add it to the list and attribute it to your name. You are also consenting for Jest Report to have a license to use your submission for this website and future Jest Report anthologies or publications.
Casey Flynn
Jest Report’s Wit List
1. What’s in the secret sauce of McDonald’s Big Mac?
- The building blocks for type-two diabetes.
2. Fast food: def. – an LDL cholesterol-delivery system.
3. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with you, and then you were promoted from cashier to head cashier at the Wal-Mart Superstore, now you’re engage to be married, definition for:
Trailer Park Trophy Wife.
4. Numerology’s finest hour:
Apollo 13
5. Infra-red contact lenses – gift ideas for the self-conscious stalker.
6. A re-enactment gone horribly wrong, def. for:
The Civil War (apparently that’s how it started, bunch of reenactors dressed up as soldiers and wouldn’t you know it … )
7. Where women go to get fat and conspire against men, definition for: ‘The Cheesecake Factory’ (Tim Flynn).
8. Love – noun: next Thursday, the F.D.A. is holding a meeting to consider a recall. If they allow ‘love’ to stay on the market, it will be with a black box warning.
9. Their like jury instructions that the two sides hammer out before the judge reads them during the proceedings – definition for – marriage vows.
10. The thing that upsets me most about the welfare reform of the 1990’s is that it’s not the mothers that suffer the most, but . . . their live-in boyfriends, it was very hard on them.
11. F. Scott Fitzgerald was famous for saying, “There are no second acts in American life. . . “ Explain Charlie Sheen?
12. The Olympics were awarded to China in 2008;
Already human rights groups are up in arms about the decision to award the Olympics to China. Wang Chung, a former Chinese political prisoner, told his harrowing story about his imprisonment in China to Wolf Blitzer of CNN news.
After seven years he was finally let out, and he went to the checkout station of the prison to gather his personal effects. He received back his wallet, his watch, some family pictures, his diary, and the rest of his personal effects. The guard asked him, ‘Is anything missing?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘My left kidney.’
True story, true story . . .
13. A friend of mine married a girl from Russia. He brought her over to the United States. They had an interview at the INS office, and the interviewer asked them questions about each other to make sure they were in a bonafide relationship. They asked my friend what was her favorite movie; he said, ‘Green Card.’
14. I have a photographic memory, so I was known for doing quite well in school.
One time a classmate asked me:
- “You got a ‘C’ on that test – how? I thought that you had a photographic memory?”
-“I do, but sometimes the pictures come back out of focus.”
15. Have you ever noticed that the people who go around saying, “Damn, wetback ferners if they can’t speak English – they should get the hell out” don’t themselves have the greatest capacity with foreign languages.
16. Why don’t people like lawyers? – That’s a good question, and right now, I don’t have the answer, but I can get it for you. But I’ve got to tell you up front that my retainer is going to be $10,000, my fee is $300.00 dollars-an-hour, plus expenses. I started to bill your file from the point of which you crossed the threshold into my office — it’s this sensor-billing-computer-gizmo thing that I just recently bought, and you’ll probably have to pay for 117th of it, as you’re my 117 actively solvent client (sure I stepped out of my office for 15 minutes while you were in here, to do my weigh in for my office weight loss competition, but I was thinking deeply about your case, as I was excoriating my support staff for not having a properly calibrated scale). Now, back to expenses, I will bill you for all meals while I work on your case, both the expense of the meal and the time it takes to eat. And I will tell you upfront, I enjoy haute French cuisine and chew very slowly. One must savor life, the French understand this. Now what I’ve just explain to you is all spelled out clearly in the fine print of your contract. Well it’s clear if you hold the contract up to the mirror and you can read Latin. Who reads Latin? The Latin Americans, that’s who! I thought it was the Romans? Listen, I don’t work for free, if you want me to answer your questions all day, you’ll have to hire me. This isn’t a charity.
17. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. William Shakespeare, Henry the Sixth, Part II, IV, ii (1623). Most people are not familiar with the larger context of this quote, which reads as follows:
Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
Cade: Nay, that I mean to do.
Dick: Then doctors will not be harrass’d with frivolous lawsuits.
Cade: Egad!
Dick: The second thing we do, go to our doctor for our weekly blood letting with
leeches.
18. Physician-assisted suicide, formally known as – MALPRACTICE.
19. What do the death penalty by lethal injection and physician-assisted suicide have in common? – Too much. Also, certain advocates argue that the Eighth Amendment prohibits one of these activities as cruel and unusual punishment.
20. Marx said, “Religion is the opiate of the people,” I say that opiates are the religion of the people.
21. Buddhism is a religion that has no legs to stand on. Why? Buddha achieved nirvana while sitting down. (Tim Flynn)
22. True story, I found this book in the library on how to convert to the Voodoo religion. It was called: ‘Voodoos and Voodon’ts – a beginner’s guide.’
23. A feminist: def. a woman who wants equal pay for equal work … plus her husband’s paycheck.
24. Interesting fact, I heard that women attempt suicide twice as much as men do, but they are four times less likely to be successful, why is that anyone anyone? They’re incompetent.
25. My brother was leaving to go away for college. And at the airport to see him off, my parents said, “Well we hope that you’re going to call, you know, maybe every Sunday, okay?”
My brother replied, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to do that, I don’t believe in long distance relationships. Goodbye.” (Tim Flynn)
26. When my brother eventually came home from college, he would invariably get phone calls from the banks that held his student loans and they would ask them why he was not paying back his loans. He would reply: “What kind of irresponsible bank gives out these kinds of loans to an 18-year-old. How they ever let people like you open up a bank is beyond me, because you have demonstrated atrocious judgment . . .”
(Tim Flynn)
27. Much like Jesus Christ, I want to move out of my parent’s house by the time I’m 30.
28. Living with your parents after college: everyday when you’re given another new chore to do, you go through this analysis, weighing your options – is it better to live here rent free or be homeless. (Tim Flynn)
29.
Why don’t liberals like heaven?
- It’s a gated community, it’s exclusionary.
What does it take to get into heaven?
- Faith in God,
- Good works,
- Math 710/ Verbal 650 SAT or ACT 29.
30. Mormon pickup lines:
- How ’bout we go back to my place and not have sex until we’re married and then only for purposes of procreation.
- Hey, I got two backstage passes for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I hear that it gets pretty crazy backstage, yeah – they practice group abstinence.
- Hey my name is Steve, how would you like to be my two-year mission?
- My name is Dave, you know – I own my own bike . . . company.
(Casey Flynn and Dave Wegner)