The Bible is full of many interesting caricatures. Michael Angelo painted them on the Sixteen Chapels.
The first five books of the Bible are Genesis, Exodus, Laxatives, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, God got tired of creating the world, so he took the Sabbath off. Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son? My punishment is greater than I can bare."
Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. He built an ark, which the animals came on to in pears. Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night. Saddam and Gomorrah were twins.
Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat 12 partridges. God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Abraham took Isaac up the mountain to be circumcised. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother, Esau's birthmark. Esau was a man who wrote fables and sold his copyright for a mess of potash. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his 12 sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with the unsympathetic Genitals. Samson was a strongman who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah. Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles. He slayed them by pulling down the pillows of the temple.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make beds without straw. Moses was an Egyptian who lived in a hark made of bullrushes. Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.
Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments. The First Commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple. The Fifth Commandment is humor thy father and mother. The Seventh Commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery. The Ninth Commandment is thou salt not bare faults witness.
Moses ate nothing but whales and manner for 40 years. He died before he ever reached Canada. Then, Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol. The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.
David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He wrote psalms. They are called psalms because he sang them while playing the harmonica. David also fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
Later came Job, who had one trouble after another. Eventually, he lost all his cattle and all his children and had to go live alone with his wife in the desert. Then came Shadrach, Meshach, and To Bed We Go, and then Salome, who was a wicked woman who wore very few clothes and took them off when she danced before Harrods.
When Mary heard that she was the Mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta. When the three wise guys from the East Side arrived, they found Jesus in the manager wrapped in waddling clothes. In the Gospel of Luke they named him Enamel. Jesus was born because Mary had an immaculate contraption. St. John, the Blacksmith, dumped water on his head.
Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you. He wrote the "B" Attitudes and explained, "Man doth not live by sweat alone." Jesus was crucified on his way to Calgary. It was a miracle when he rose from the dead and managed to get the tomb stone off the entrance.
The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels. The epistles were the wives of the apostles. One of the opossums was St. Matthew, who was by profession a taximan.
St. Paul cavorted to Christianity. He preached holy acrimony, which is another name for marriage. A Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony. The natives of Macedonia did not believe in Paul, so he got stoned.
Other Christians were condemned to death in large groups. They entered the arena to face wild lions singing hymns of praise in the name of the Father, the Son, and In-the-Hole-He-Goes. The Romans went to the coliseum to watch the Christians die for the fun of it. But, as Mel Brooks says, "The meek shall inherit the earth."
© Richard Lederer
An Austin, Texas, Emergency Medical Technician answered a call at the home of an elderly woman whose sister had collapsed. As they were placing her into the ambulance, the lady wailed, "Oh, lawdy, lawdy. I know what's the matter with her. She done got the same thing what killed her brother. It's a heretical disease."
The technician asked what that would be, and the lady said, "The Smiling Mighty Jesus!"
When the technician got the sister to the county hospital, she looked up the brother's medical records to find he had died of spinal meningitis.
A woman rushed into the lobby of a hospital and exclaimed, "Where's the fraternity ward?" The receptionist calmly replied, "You must mean the maternity ward."
The woman went on, "But I have to see the upturn." Patiently, the receptionist answered, "You must mean the intern."
Exasperated, the woman continued, "Fraternity, maternity, upturn, intern -- I don't care wherever or whoever. Even though I use an IOU, and my husband has had a bisectomy, I haven't demonstrated for two months and I think I may be fragrant!"
That same woman later became three centimeters diluted and, narrowly avoiding a mess carriage, she ultimately went into contraptions. Her baby was born with its biblical cord wrapped around its arm, and she asked if she could have the child circumscribed before leaving the hospital.
It is ironic that the humor in hospitals, emergency rooms, and doctors' office -- usually some of the scariest places -- can be exceedingly hilarious. The giddy ghost of Mrs. Malaprop haunts medical halls and application forms, where we discover all manner of strange conditions, such as swollen asteroids (adenoids), an erection (anorexia) nervosa, shudders (shingles!), and migrating headaches. All the malappropriate terms in this chapter were miscreated by anxious patients or hassled doctors and nurses.
A man went to his eye doctor, who told him he had a case of myopera and would have to wear contract lenses. That was a lot better than his friend who had had a cadillac removed from his eye. Still, when he worked at his computer, he would have watch out for harbor tunnel syndrome. He worried that his authoritis of the joints might be a signal of Old Timer's disease and fretted that a genital heart defect was causing trouble with his duodemon (duodenum).
Another man was in the hospital passing gull stones from his bladder while the doctor was treating a cracked dish from his spine. After the operation, his glands were completely prostrated. A hyannis hernia, hanging hammeroids, inflammation of the strocum, and a blockage of his large intesticle could have rendered him impudent.
It was enough to give a body heart populations, high pretension, a peppery ulcer, and postmortem depression -- even a cerebral hemorrhoid. But at least that's better than a case of headlights (head lice), sea roses of the liver, cereal palsy, or sick as hell anemia. Any of these could cause one to slip into a comma.
A woman experienced itching of the virginia during administration, which led to pulps all up her virginal area and they had to void her reproductions. This was followed by a tubular litigation and, ultimately, mental pause. Mental pause can cause one to become a maniac depressive and act like a cyclopath.
She didn't worry about her very close veins, but she thought that a mammy-o-gram and Pabst smear might show if she had swollen nymph glands and fireballs of the eucharist. That's "fibroids of the uterus," and it's something you can't cure with simple acnepuncture, Heineken Maneuver, or a bare minimum (barium) enema. Apparently, evasive surgery would be required. Afterwards, she would recuperate in expensive care.
© Richard Lederer
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or history teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay or test paper. It is truly astonishing what havoc students can wreak on the chronicles of the human race. The following "history" of the United States is cobbled from my books Anguished English and (out this October from Pocket Books) Fractured English. Each fluff and flub, goof and gaffe, and boo-boo and blooper is authentic, genuine, and certified. Most of them have been sent me by readers. Because I rely on the kindness of strangers like you for bloopers, I invite you to e-mail or snail mail me your best examples.
Christopher Columbus discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were named the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Columbus knelt, thanked God, and put the American flag in the ground. Tarzan is a short name for the American flag. Its full name for the Tarzans and Stripes.
Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called the Pill's Grim Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died, and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere were throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking, and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
America was founded by four fathers. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of independence, which says that all men are cremated equal and are well endowed by their creator.
Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand!" Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
George Washington married Martha Custis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. The difference between a king and a president is that a king is the son of his father, but a president isn't. Washington was a very social man. He had big balls, and everyone enjoyed them. His farewell address was Mount Vernon.
Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution, the people have the right to bare arms.
Abraham, Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his very own hands. When Lincoln was president, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength."
Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emaciation Proclamation. Lincoln debated John Kennedy in 1960. Kennedy won because he looked better than Lincoln, who had pallor due to his assassination.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton caused a network of rivers to spring up. Thomas Edison invented the pornograph, and Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
The First World War was caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist. During the early part of World War I President Woodrow Wilson urged the people to stay in neutral. Then he had many foreign affairs, and America entered the War. The unfortunate soldiers spent day after day up to their wastes in filth.
World War I made the people so sad that it brought on the Great Depression. Then the New Deal tried to make sure that the stock market will never happen again.
World War II happened when Hitler and the Knotsies had erotic dreams of conquest all over Europe, but Franklin Roosevelt went over there and put a stop to him. Hitler committed suicide in his bunk, and World War II ended on VD Day.
Martin Luther had a dream. He went to Washington and recited his Sermon on the Monument. Later, he nailed 96 Protestants in the Watergate Scandal, which ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
© Richard Lederer
When it comes to writing about classical music, students across our nation show themselves to be fit as fiddles. They pull out all the stops and never soft-pedal the facts about our musical heritage. Without blowing their own horns, chiming in, or harping on the subject, they strike a responsive chord. Here is a chapter from Fractured English, published by Pocket Books in October, 1996.
Young scholars have expressed their rapture for the Bronze Lullaby, the Taco Bell Cannon, Beethoven's Erotica, Tchaikovsky's Cracknutter Suite, and Gershwin's Rap City in Blue. In defining musical terms, they also demonstrate that they know their brass from their oboe:
Students sing a different tune and play it by ear when they write about the famous composers, even those who never existed:
© Richard Lederer
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