36 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
36 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
# @(#)README 8.1 (Berkeley) 5/31/93
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# $FreeBSD$
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Some years ago, my neighbor Avery said to me: "There has not been an
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adequate jokebook published since "Joe_Miller", which came out in 1739 and
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which, incidentally, was the most miserable no-good ... jokebook in the
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history of the printed word."
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In a subsequent conversation, Avery said: "A funny story is a funny
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story, no matter who is in it - whether it's about Catholics or Protestants,
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Jews or Gentiles, blacks or whites, browns or yellows. If a story is genuinely
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funny it makes no difference how dirty it is. Shout it from the rooftops.
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Let the chips fall all over the prairie and let the bonehead wowsers yelp.
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... on them."
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It is a nice thing to have a neighbor of Avery's grain. He has
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believed in the aforestated principles all his life. A great many other
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people nowadays are casting aside the pietistic attitude that has led them
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to plug up their ears against the facts of life. We of The Brotherhood
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believe as Avery believes; we have never been intimidated by the pharisaical
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meddlers who have been smelling up the American landscape since the time of
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the bundling board. Neither has any one of our members ever been called a
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racist. Still, we have been in unremitting revolt against the ignorant
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propensity which ordains, in effect, that "The Green Pastures" should never
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have been written; the idiot attitude which compelled Arthur Kober to abandon
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his delightful Bella Gross, and Octavius Roy Cohen to quit writing about the
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splendiferous Florian Slappey; the moronic frame of mind which, if carried
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to its logical end, would have forbidden Ring Lardner from writing in the
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language of the masses.
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-- H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
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... let us keep in mind the basic governing philosophy of The
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Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in these words: we believe in
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healthy, hearty laughter -- at the expense of the whole human race, if
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needs be.
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Needs be.
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-- H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
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