Word: joking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Pretoria's old Raadsaal (council hall) was windy with laughter last week. Ninety-nine Nationalist members of Parliament assembled there, not as legislators but as so-called judges. They thought it was a great joke, and kept calling to each other: "Goeie more, Meneer Regt;" (Good morning, Mister Judge). But for South Africa's second-and third-class citizens, the joke was a grim...
...puritanism and passion: the two qualities are powerful partners. Though she sometimes swears like a trooper, she does not like to hear others swear. She sips at a drink occasionally to be sociable, but she is eloquent on the evils of hard liquor. She seldom understands a double-meaning joke, and if she does, she is annoyed. While on location for The African Queen, Director John Huston and Humphrey Bogart would often tease Kate by telling off-color stories or pretending to an excessive thirst for alcohol. Finally Kate told them airily: "You boys think you're awfully wicked...
...They point out that even a normal person stumbles or hesitates in his speech at the rate of five to eight times a minute, that the worst thing a stutterer can do is to try to hide his defect. Stutterers are encouraged to read aloud, to exaggerate their stutter, joke about it. Each summer they are sent out to talk to at least 200 strangers. They keep notes on how those strangers react, and are amazed to find that only one in 100 would ever dream of ridiculing them. As their fear melts away, the stutterers relax and begin...
...most popular joke making the rounds last week in the land of Goethe and Krupp told of Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany, at prayer in his chapel. From the vaults below, he heard a German voice groaning: "Adenauer, Adenauer, save me." The Chancellor crossed himself and dug downwards towards the voice. In a pit strewn with ruins he found Germania crucified, and stooped to draw out the nails clamping his nation's feet to a cross made by the Allies. As the nails came loose, Germania sprang up, and with a mighty kick booted Adenauer out of the chapel...
...world's first psephologist. That, says he, is a man who specializes in the study of elections; the word comes from the Greek for pebble ("You know how they used to hold their elections by dropping pebbles in a box"). Psephologist Butler admitted that the coinage was a joke, "but for all I know, the word may some day catch...