Word: joking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...implications of the whole display, though, are too great to leave one's conscience unburdened, particularly when one owes his very existence to some of these stuffed species. Perhaps the zoologists have tried to laugh away any feelings of guilt, with the Proboscis Mankey as the butt of their joke. Like Rostand writing of Cyrano, the placard describes Proboscis as of "large size, bright colors, and grotesque nose . . . curiously elongated and flexible . . . The special use to which he puts it is doubtful...
...bleak, cotton-growing Ejido Florencia, back in the hills from the northern city of Torreón, the name of Cliserio Reyes was a standing joke. While other boys of his age in the small farming community interested themselves in girls or beisbol, 18-year-old Cliserio spent all his spare time and meager pocket money building model airplanes. To repeated gibes, and pleas from his friends to abandon such foolishness, he replied flatly: "Some day I'm going...
Only in the sketches of Khufu, Alexander, and Hannibal does Cuppy come near hitting the stride he maintained in "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes" and in his short articles for The Saturday Evening Post. Still, he conveys the impression that he has discovered one joke about an individual and is merely expanding it through all its variations. For most of the sketches, it is the same joke, and a not very original one at that...
William Steig's drawings are certainly the best feature of the volume. Each is clean, original, and witty, and each makes its joke only once...
Interested by the volume of response, a psychologist made a study of some of the reservations. A few were patently gags, he decided, but most came from people who seemed to be tired of it all and thought the chance of escaping this sorry earth was no joke at all. A woman from Massachusetts was typical. "It would be heaven to get away from this busy earth," she wrote. "I honestly wish God would let me get away . . . and just go somewhere where it's nice and peaceful, good, safe, and secure...