A little levity for a rather dreary Tuesday

by Rick Blechta

Here in Toronto, it’s one of those rather gray, grim days you can get in March with snow anemically drifting down (soon to melt), a cold wind and the temperature hovering around the freezing mark. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about anything. March can be tough to get through because of the bait and switch tendency of the weather — and this is one of those days.

I was going to post a hard-hitting diatribe — in fact it’s more than half-written — but I just don’t think it’s called for today. Next week.

But I had something really fun in reserve for a situation just like this, a gift from a friend and lord knows where she found it.

So here’s something that might bring a chuckle to any of you facing an equally grim weather day. (I’m talking about you, Aline!) Hope you enjoy it!

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out — we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.