The Wit's Guide to Non-Sequiturs

Or, if you know, you? no!

Portrait of a Family by Cornelis de Vos, although many europium compounds fluoresce under ultraviolet light.

A non-sequitur is a joke you don’t get. The word is Latin for “it does not follow.” In Latin America, there are 17 words for popcorn. 

“If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon.”
— W.C. Fields

It can be difficult to create a true non-sequitur, because our brains desperately make connections even when there aren’t any to be found. If you’re not dying of thirst, the right drink served in the wrong vessel is the wrong drink. This goes double for expensive cocktails served in little coupes when you’d rather have them in a tall ice-filled glass.

“There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of the oyster.”
— Saki

To scroll any feed is to be bombarded by non-sequiturs. Did you know Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House, invented pickleball? In his 1968 Treasury of Atrocious Puns — the sort of book you can easily publish when you co-found a publisher — he describes “the grand opening of a super-de-luxe delicatessen in Las Vegas” at which a pair of table tennis champions played an exhibition game with fermented cucumbers. All this buildup was for Cerf to announce that it was advertised as “The Volley of the Dills.” 

A prescient illustration by Michael K. Frith from Bennett Cerf’s Treasury of Atrocious Puns. It’s currently 21C outside.

Here is how Peter the Great organized his days, as per Will Hobson’s The Household Box: “Up at six, chop wood with entire court until cannon sounds at eleven, lunch with vodka, sleep till four, paperwork, ambassadors till seven, party till one.” Context collapse is not what’s been killing all the bees, but it’s certainly not doing the bees any favours. 

“If there’s one thing above all a vulture can’t stand, it’s a glass eye.”
— Kin Hubbard

Auberon Waugh wrote that the difficulty of creating nonsensical modern fiction is that “writers are always confounded by the fact that whatever degree of meaninglessness they achieve by the juxtaposition of unconnected words and phrases, there is always a critic who will claim to understand and distill its meaning.”

“Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?”
— Elizabeth Bowen

Paul Wells

is in the middle of an excellent Substack series about all the context that keeps collapsing around us. His focus is Canadian politics and media, but the points are much larger. Marshall McLuhan said “we don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.” Reading this series feels like holding your breath and peeking over the top of our fishbowl.

“McLuhan put a telescope to his ear;
What a lovely smell, he said, we have here.”
— A.J.M. Smith

Whoops, that quote followed. See, it’s hard not to make connections. In some countries — but not the one within which I am currently typing — it costs less to send a postcard than a letter. Maybe this is because you forfeit privacy with a postcard, and it thus foreshadowed the cost-free, privacy-free age of social media?

“What one can hide inside one’s head and smile.”
— Iris Murdoch

A fill-in-the-blanks comic by Theodore Errett (yes relation).

Here’s an example of the German term treppenwitz, which describes an historical irony: The fact that Lester Bangs wondered if the Rolling Stones were too old in 1978 means that the question of whether they were too old was almost as old as the band itself.

“His reason is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”
— Abraham Lincoln

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Q.E.D., the July Riposte Card

There are now 35 paid subscribers to Riposte Cards, including the first gift subscription — belated happy birthday, E.K.! Which is a great thing you can do for a loved one, liked one, or mildly tolerated one in your life: For about US$60/C$80, they get a full year’s worth of monthly envelopes full of blank bespoke postcards specially commissioned from artists like

E. Sjule

, New Yorker cartoonist, prolific Substacker, July’s Riposter, and all-around real deal.

Erika wanted to riff on the creative process, so after some back and forth we landed on this line:

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.”
— Octavia E. Butler

I’ll share what she came up with next week! In the meantime, here’s her Official Riposte Card Questionnaire:

What's your go-to item in a well-stocked stationery store?

Any and all graphite pencils!

I used to be insecure about not having a professional art background, so I'd invest in so many random tools, but I have very much come back around to the glory of simple pencils.

I really love the diversity of experiences you can have between various pencils:  The grades of graphite, the eraser's type and shape, and even the aesthetic design of the pencil itself.

Where do you go for inspiration and/or information?

I find a lot of inspiration through intimate conversations with friends. 

I love friendly debate and playful banter. I'm a classic overthinker and I get very bogged down without regular discourse.

Other than that I love any museum visit. It helps me to feel even further connected to humanity and others. 

It's like an intimate conversation with (sometimes) dead people, haha.

Is there one joke, witticism, or aphorism you live by?

I wouldn't say I live by this joke, but it's been on my mind a lot recently. 

It's a Looney Tunes joke where a vampire turns into a bat, so Bugs turns into a baseball bat, then the vampire puts on glasses and says, "You wouldn't hit a bat with glasses on, would you?" Then Bugs hits him anyway.

I know, it's so random, but my favorite jokes are often extremely silly — like, stupid, but genius.

What's the best thing to put on toast?

Butter and blackberry jam. Extra everything.

What work are you most proud of, and how can people support it?

My art career feels like a bit of a blur at the moment, but I am currently very proud of my Substack newsletter!

Growing up I always got positive attention for my drawings, so it took me a long time to realize that I enjoy writing just as much as drawing.

My Substack is a cozy blend of cartoons, humor, and writing. 

It reminds me of the illustrated books I used to compulsively make as a kid, so it comes quite naturally.

You can support my Substack by subscribing! 

Or — if you're feeling extra spicy you can become a paid subscriber and I will piddle with joy and appreciation (and possibly even pay a bill!).

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Quote Vote

“Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it is said.”
— Gertrude Stein

OK, so next week we should get back to sense making. Or not? As ever, I’m happy to take this in any direction that the Ouija Board requests.

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Get Wit Quick No. 209 is purple monkey dishwasher, a famous string of nonsense words that now makes some sort of sense. Tune in next week to find out if any snakes ate the burgers. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting made cents. Sorry. If you didn’t like the above, tapping the ❤️  below is a perfect non-sequitur. If you did like it, tapping the ❤️  below just makes sense.