Laugh Lines

Apocalypse now?

People are making jokes about the apocalypse like there's no tomorrow.

Talk-show host Jimmy Fallon weighed in with this: "McDonald's just announced that it's bringing back the McRib later this month. Or, as the Mayans put it, 'Hey, we tried to warn you.' "

Jay Leno predicted: "If the world doesn't end on Dec. 21, you can bet the next day the malls will be overrun with Mayans trying to buy last-minute gifts."

And the website www.paulkavanagh.com compiled a list of how various publications will report the end of the world. Among them:

  • USA Today: We're Dead.

  • The Wall Street Journal: Dow Jones Plummets as World Ends

  • Playboy: Girls of the Apocalypse

  • Microsoft Systems Journal: Apple Loses Market Share

  • Sports Illustrated: Game Over

  • Wired: The Last New Thing

  • Rolling Stone: The Grateful Dead Reunion Tour

  • Reader's Digest: 'Bye

  • Discover Magazine: How Will the Extinction of All Life as We Know It Affect the Way We View the Cosmos?

  • TV Guide: Death and Damnation: Nielsen Ratings Soar

  • Ladies' Home Journal: Lose 10 Pounds by Judgment Day With Our New Armageddon Diet

  • Inc. magazine: Ten Ways You Can Profit From the Apocalypse

  • Microsoft's website: If You Didn't Experience the Rapture, Download Software Patch Rapt777.Exe

Double oops

Max comes home to this wife, Minnie, on Christmas Eve and says, "I left the mall in such a hurry today, I forgot to get two things."

"Like what?" Minnie asks.

"For one thing," Max says, "I forgot to get wrapping paper."

"That's okay," Minnie says. "You don't need to wrap my present."

"Actually," Max says, "that's the other thing."

Practice

Ten useful phrases for responding to Christmas presents you would rather not have received:

  1. Thanks a lot.

  2. My word, what a gift.

  3. Well, well, well ...

  4. If I hadn't put on so much weight recently it would have fitted me perfectly.

  5. Gosh, I hope I never lose this. We're always losing things around here.

  6. It's great, but I'm worried about the envy it may create.

  7. Just my luck to get this on the very Christmas I promised to give all my gifts to charity.

  8. Unfortunately, I am about to enter the witness protection program.

  9. Frankly, I don't deserve this.

  10. Really, you shouldn't have.

Quotes of note

• "Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa." -- Bart Simpson

• "If Santa would close his eyes on the weekends, I probably wouldn't be on the naughty list." -- Estella Trujillo

• "These Christmas puns are getting annoying. Please don't post one, or yule be sorry." -- Unknown

• "I'm not a morning person, but on Dec. 25, it's a totally different story." -- Unknown

• "At Christmas time, it's fun to take a new Lexus for a test drive, put a big red bow on it and pull into random people's driveways honking." -- Unknown

• "People really act weird at Christmas time. What other time of year do you sit in front of a dead tree in the living room and eat nuts and sweets out of your socks?" -- Unknown

• "Dear Santa, please send your credit card numbers. Its only fair since you're getting the credit for the gifts that you should start paying for them also." -- Unknown

• "Christmas is a time when you get homesick, even when you're home." -- Unknown

• "You know you're getting old when Santa starts looking younger." -- Robert Paul

• "Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people once a year." -- Victor Borge

• "The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live." -- George Carlin

• "Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall." -- Larry Wilde

• "Christmas is the season when you buy this year's gift with next year's money." -- Unknown

• "Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered." -- Unknown

Laugh Lines is compiled from various sources, including reader submissions and websites. Origins are included when known.

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