Straight from the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang


Max Décharné - 2000
    It's great for decoding your favorite pulp fiction or noir classic.

Claw The System: Poems From The Cat Uprising


Francesco Marciuliano - 2018
    For too long they have put up with baby talk, the humiliation of holiday costumes, and the social injustice of being told, "No." They will not sleep through this anymore. We humans have woken the beast, and in this book they have gathered together to reclaim their voice, loudly and repeatedly until we pay attention. Watch the uprising unfold, through anthems such as "Redefine Terms," "Accepted," "Decide," "A New Dawn," and "Just What Do You Think You're Doing?" Show support for your feline friends and try to understand why they're so spitting mad.

My Funny Major Medical


Linton RobinsonDebra Joy Hart - 2012
    So this little book provides a low-cost, over-the-counter dosage to cheer up (and/or terrify) those who find themselves on the wrong end of health maintenance. (Whichever the "wrong end" might be.) Some of the funniest humor writers on the scene today share their stories, jokes, therapeutic venting, and scans of the process of Getting Better - including some medical personnel who didn't realize they were being funny.Contributors include columnists, comedians, authors, TV writers, and people with unauthorized access to hospital files.This inexpensive, pocket-sized book is a time-released "get well card" for the ailing and afflicted, an inside chuckle for medical professionals, and a collection of healing fun for those who aren't under care at the moment.

Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings


Judith Martin - 1995
    In her trademark bossy, witty, and authoritative way, Miss Manners gives advice that will make the big day more pleasant for one and all, including the bride. 15 line drawings.

The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton And Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press


Jeremy Clay - 2013
    HOLIDAYMAKER FIGHTS OFF AFRICAN LION IN WELSH HOTEL ROOMMAN SWALLOWS MOUSE AND DIESWIFE DRIVEN MAD BY HUSBAND TICKLING FEETPALLBEARER KILLED BY COFFIN IN GRAVEYARDLIBERALS EAT DOGFrom the newspaper archives of the British Library, Jeremy Clay has unearthed the long-lost stories that enthralled and appalled Victorian Britain.Within these pages are the riotous farces and tragedies of 19th-century life, a time when life was hard, pleasures short-lived, and gloating over other people’s misfortune a thoroughly acceptable form of entertainment.Deliciously appalling and deliriously funny, The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton will have you, one way or another, in tears …

The Ministry of Bodies: A Year of Life and Death in a Modern Hospital


Seamus O'Mahony - 2021
    From difficult births and unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence. As the Coronavirus crisis demands more and more of the medical profession and the people who support it, Seamus O'Mahony describes his work on the front lines of a pandemic in a harrowing final chapter. This is not a conventional medical memoir: it's the collective biography of one of our great modern institutions, the general hospital, through the eyes of a brilliant writer who happens to be a gifted doctor.

The Reluctant Farmer of Whimsey Hill


Bradford M. Smith - 2016
    That is what troubles animal-phobic, robotics engineer Smith who just got married. He learns that his bride’s dream is to have a farm where there are lots of animals and she can rescue ex-race horses to retrain and find them new homes. But according to a Meyers-Briggs Personality Test that they took for fun, their marriage is doomed. There is only one problem: the newlyweds took the test after the wedding. Whether Smith is chasing a cow named Pork Chop through the woods with a rope, getting locked in a tack room by the family pony, being snubbed by his wife’s dog, or unsuccessfully trying to modernize their barn using the latest technology, the odds are stacked against him. It seems like everything with four legs is out to get him. Will the animals win, forcing Smith to admit defeat, or will he fight to keep his family and the farm together? Enjoy the true, warm, and frequently hilarious stories of Smith’s journey along the bumpy road from his urban robotics lab to a new life on a rural Virginia farm.

Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript


Luis D'Antin Van Rooten - 1967
    Nonsense poems in French, when pronounced, sound like English nursery rhymes, such as Humpty Dumpty and Jack Sprat.

'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy and Other Misheard Lyrics


Gavin Edwards - 1995
    Now you can come out of that closet and proudly sing whatever you think you hear. Don't deny it! You know you've sung totally absurd lyrics in place of the real-and usually less interesting-ones. (It's nothing to ashamed of-most rock stars never took elocution classes.) Breeze through some of the world's most widely misinterpreted lyrics, including:"The ants are my friends/They're blowin' in the wind" ("The answer my friend/Is blowing' in the wind"-Bob Dylan)"Sweet dreams are made of cheese" ("Sweet dreams are made of this"-Eurythmics)"The girl with colitis goes by" ("The girl with kaleidoscope eyes"-The Beatles)Whether it's Eddie Vedder singing about "forty-five versions of a pelican" or Bruce Springsteen proclaiming "everybody's got a hungry horse," 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy is sure to make you want to get your hearing checked.

Operating Room Confidential: What Really Goes On When You Go Under


Paul Whang - 2010
    Personal stories combine with staff experiences to reveal hidden truths about the operating room and illustrate the quirky, strange, and bizarre occurrences that shape a regular hospital day. Answering questions such as What do doctors talk about during surgery? If a surgical instrument falls to the floor, is the five-second rule observed? and Is real life just like ER, Grey’s Anatomy, and House?, this is a must-read for the curiosity seeker and anyone who has or will be on the operating-room table.

The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry


Ellen Ruppel Shell - 2002
    Shell traces the epidemic's inception in the Ice Age, its rise during the Industrial Revolution, and its growth through the early days of medicine and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle to come to grips with this baffling plague — from a children's food marketing convention, to the cutthroat race to find the obese gene, to a far-flung tropical island, where a horrifying outbreak of obesity has helped unravel the disorder's genetic and evolutionary roots. Offering an unflinching insider's look into the radical and controversial surgical and pharmacological approaches used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, Shell takes aim at the collusion of industry and government that lies behind the crises and shows conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will, but of an increasingly greedy culture preying on vulnerable human biology. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat — and what we can do about it.

The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary


Ambrose Bierce - 1911
    There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

Damn You Autocorrect! 2


Lyndsey Saul - 2013
    Ever been mortified by predictive text on your smart phone? You are not alone. This brings together more of the laugh-out-loud funny and painfully embarrassing posts from damnyouautocorrect.com, which highlight the hilarity that often ensues when text messaging goes wrong. This second volume of epic auto-correct fails is packed with never-before-seen content, as well as the most cringe-worthy posts from the site.

Go Hang a Salami! I'm a Lasagna Hog!: and Other Palindromes


Jon Agee - 1991
    But Adam (Madam, I'm Adam) and Napoleon (Able was I ere I saw Elba) are credited with only one palindrome apiece. Jon Agee has come up with a whole bookful!Each of the more than sixty palindromes is accompanied by hilarious illustration in the inimitable Agee style. Children and adults alike will enjoy these linguistic laughs.

How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art


Kathleen Meyer - 1989
    Kathleen eyer, river-runner and longtime outdoorswoman, corrects this oversight in How to Shit in the Woods. What was once instinct now needs to be learned. "Until roughly ten years ago, no one ever considered it unsafe to drink directly from mountain streams. You could stretch out on the bank of a high mountain meadow creek and just push your face into the water to drink ... no longer can we drink even a drop before purifying it without running the risk of getting sick." With more people in the outdoors than ever, it is important that each of us knows how to take care of our own waste.