"Quotes for the end of the world" joke

As the year 2000 rolls at us like the big ball after Indiana Jones, Allan Appel has compiled "A Portable Apocalypse: A Quotable Companion to the End of the World" (Riverhead Books, $12). Some highlights:

The world ended Sunday night -- at least on CBS. Some people were mad when they found out it wasn't true.

Tony Williams of WUSA after the airing of a TV movie filmed as a breaking news broadcast covering the crash of asteroids into Earth.

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Due to cutbacks the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off.

-- sign hanging in office at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, 1995

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There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end: Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

-- from Assyrian tablet, 2800 B.C.E.

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Somehow the world never seems to end before your homework is due.

P.J. O'Rourke, "All the Trouble in the World"

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Due to the lack of experienced trumpeters, the End of the World has been postponed for three weeks.

-- sign hung in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1970

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Following a nuclear attack on the United States, the U.S. Postal Service plans to distribute Emergency Change of Address Cards.

-- directives from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), Executive Order #11490, 1969

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The Great Flood was sent because of the large numbers of dirty people.

-- from "The Pocket Book of Boners: An Omniubus of School Boy Howlers and Unconscious Humor"

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Society is heading for the Big Flush, and we're going to be the ones clinging to the rim while everything else goes down.

-- from the film "Survivors," written by Michael Leesan

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The human race is a pilot project that's failed: Denied future funding!

Belinda Plutz

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It turns out that the Maya simply walked away from their civilization nearly 1,000 years ago. Incidentally, they predicted that the world would end on Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012. Jot it down.

John J. O'Conner from "Ultimate Rerun: History," in the New York Times, July 1995

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I believe that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was -- an arctic region covered with ice.

Steve Martin

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Life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

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