100 Years of Subatomic Humor

From the Back Cover Subatomic Humor is the funniest humor column you've probably never heard of, and 100 Years of Subatomic Humor brings together a hundred of its funniest-ever articles. One the economy: "The economy is bad these days. Indeed, for many, especially those in their twenties, 'security' has come to mean nothing more than the people who come to arrest you at the mall." On film: "There are two kinds of movie. There's the kind where an elite team of commandos tries to take over something, and there's the kind I don't want to see." On fun and games: "Most people think it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Well, that's just not true. Look at pirates. Most of them have poked-out eyes, and they still have lots of fun and games." On the fall of the Roman Empire: "Yes, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it was the emergency broadcast fiddle." On the great outdoors: "When camping with David Copperfield make sure he doesn't bring all his big magic trick equipment. Simple card tricks are more appropriate for a wilderness setting." On sex: "I wonder if a lot of people who like S&M also like M&Ms." About the Author Paul Mather got his first professional comedy gig when he was 15. Since then, he's managed to co-found two near-famous comedy troupes (Atomic Improv and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie), pen four or five plays, write comedy for the Edmonton Journal and CBC Radio, and produce over 160 Subatomic Humor articles. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. My girlfriend and I are going to paint our living room. So we went down to the store and picked up a bunch of those little paint sample cards. You know, the little cards that let you test one colour against another, and against the rug, and the couch, and the picture, and -- apparently -- every other object in the house and, in fact, the neighborhood. There are a million different colours of paint out there, but what's really impressive is that each different colour has its own unique name. Listen to these names: shire fields, lido bay, windstream, candlebark, city loft, lombardy mist. Pretty great names, eh? But what's amazing is this: those are all just shades of white! When you start getting into actual colours the names start to get even better: walnut wash, sienna sand, autumn wheat, water hawthorn.... mmmmm! They sound so good it makes me want to eat the little cards. Never mind that the names don't actually make any sense. (I mean, candlebark -- what exactly is that? I guess it's the opposite of treewax.) The point is, I really like those names. In fact, I think I'd like to become a professional paint namer. Being a paint namer wouldn't always be easy. I mean, some days you'd be sitting there surrounded by all these slightly different shades of blue, trying to figure out which should be called temptress and which should be called ocean depths. I imagine, eventually, you might freak out, grab your supervisor by the collar, shove a sample card down his throat and scream: "It's blue! Okay? It's just blue! It's just blue!" Behavior like that could get you black deco-balled from the industry. Still, if you can hack it, a successful paint namer makes all his friends chaparral pea with envy. Initially, my girlfriend and I were going to paint our living room herbivore. (Take a moment and try to guess what colour that is. Answer: kind of olive-tan. I guess they figured olive-tan was about the colour of the inside of a wapiti's stomach.) Eventually, though, we decided to paint our living room warm shadows, with dark quest trim. My girlfriend probably picked these colours because she liked the way they looked, but I picked them because I thought their names sounded like TV shows. "A rogue vampire threatens to expose Xarxon and topple the alliance! Can Montague and Kathy put aside their differences long enough to stop him? Join the excitement at eight on Dark Quest! "Then at nine: