Into a Bar

There’s a fun little language meme over at alt.usage.english: bar jokes that hinge on fine points of grammar, punctuation, and linguistics. Peter Moylan of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, got the ball rolling on November 22*:

1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.

3. A question mark walks into a bar?

4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a bar.

5. A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, planning to drink.

6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.

7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

Last time I checked, there were 126 posts, many with multiple entries. Some of my favorites:

• A spoonerism balks into a war.
• A colon walks into a bar and evacuates.
• A snowclone walks into the mother of all bars.
• omg a TnAjrrr wks n2 a bar
• Davy Crockett walks into a b'ar.
• A superlative goes into a bar none.
• A musician segues into a bar.
• A telegrapher walks into a -... .- .-. .

And there’s this, from Jerry Friedman (no relation):

A poet walks into a bar.
“A metaphor, friends, is a star.
   It always sounds neater
   In anapest meter,
And the rhyme shouldn’t mar it or jar.”

My own (unposted) contribution: A clumsy ballerina walks into a barre.

Completely independently (I think), Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten posted this bit of brilliance on Twitter last week:

 

* UPDATE: Commenter Allison Callan points out that Peter Moylan's original post wasn't original: it quoted a November 8 article by Erik K. Auld on McSweeney's. 

Comments

[Allison Callan (@thats2Ls)]

No disrespect to Peter Moylan, but his OP quoted Erik K Auld, who posted the original list on McSweeneys, apparently on 11/8: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/seven-bar-jokes-involving-grammar-and-punctuation Loved seeing the additions on alt.usage.english, so thanks for leading me to those! Made me go look up some grammar vocab.

[Nancy Friedman]

Thanks, Allison. Mea culpa.

[Laura Payne]

I found the following outstanding variations at The Stroppy Editor http://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/jokes-are-barred/

A subject and a verb disagrees about which bar to walk into.
An Oxford comma hops, skips, and jumps into a bar.
A pleonasm enters into a bar.
The subjunctive would walk into a bar, were it in the mood.
A hyphen, drunk after leaving the bar, mistakenly walks-into a phrasal verb.
A colon and a semicolon walk into a bar: the colon has a gutful; the semicolon orders a half.
A syllepsis walks out on its wife and into a bar.
A gang of commas walk into a bar and order everything on the menu.
A prescriptivist walks into a tavern, because of course ‘bar’ means the counter at which drink is served rather than the establishment itself. He wonders why nobody else is there.
A meaning walks into a bar and orders a double.
A portmanteau walks into a barmaid.

[Nancy Friedman]

@Laura: Love 'em, especially the one about the prescriptivist.

[Mark Gunnion]

A few months back, when the data from the cyclotron seemed to indicate that there actually were things that could go faster than the speed of light, this joke ran around:

"We don't serve faster-than-light neutrinos in here," says the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

[Duchesse]

An ampersand walks into a Bar & Grill.

[Ben Lukoff]

Glad to see AUE is still around. I discovered them nearly 20 years ago, when it was still USENET.

[bernie from Planck's]

How about: a dyslexic walks into a bra?

[Nancy Friedman]

@bernie: Yep, it's on the alt.usage.english list.

[bernie from Planck's]

Dang, I see it now. But on a slightly related note: I went out with a girl who made bras for a living but I broke it off because she wouldn't give me the support I needed.

[John Varela]

alt.usage.english is most certainly NOT a GoogleGroup. It is a USENET group and always has been.

[Nancy Friedman]

@John: Got it. Fixed it!