<Dom: <Plus, the Gonds always win>>

For a moment there, I thought you said Gands. Anyhoo, if you're not familiar with Eric Frank Russell's "And Then There Were None" (also published as a part of a longer novelette, "The Great Explosion") you should definitely give this link (has the whole text online) a check-out:

http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell....

I rate it as the second funniest Sci-Fi short story ever, behind Randall Garrett's "The Best Policy" (that one unfortunately couldn't be found online at last check). Mind you, both belong to The Golden Age of SF, so they are a bit on the outdated side by now, but still good for a few hours of fun reading. :)

Remarkable, as I've said. And now I've remarked on it again, raising its remarkability quotient by several oodles and a sliver.

- Duchampian cartoon hero and Casino Royale wannabe, Steve Mint, owes his success to the fine things in life. "Not me, baby - the inframince" he says.

- Is it yerself?
- To be sure, to be sure.

<Political boundaries->

Quite right.

Can you tell me where my country lies?

For her merchandise, he traded in his prize

"Paper late!" cried a voice in the crowd

Old man dies- the note he left, was signed "Old Father Thames"

It seems he's drowned...

Selling England, by the Pound

I enjoy the look I get from the male trolley dollies on trains when I ask for "no milk, yeurgh, and *eight* sugars, please ..."

You can see them wondering if counting in English is possibly more complicated than they'd been taught. But my logic is impeccable. I've measured them, and yer typical catering sachet contains less than half a teaspoonful of sugar: so it's really only three spoons or so. Of which I take two and secrete the rest for future use.

Don't try this at home, kids. Apart from the fact that your teeth fall out, you risk confusion -- the (typically Russian) server thinks "They're Irish -- they like milk and they never say what they mean" ... and serves up eight disgusting plastic tubs of UHT pseudo-milk. Cow juice is bad enough to a lactophobe like me, but the ersatz variety is beyond disgusting.

Anyhoo, the land will be quite thoroughly reformed by the time it's under water. By coincidence, the well-known reform school for grownups in Guantanamo has a similar policy, but they call it waterboarding.

<the second funniest Sci-Fi short story ever> ... quite possible, I haven't read it yet. But Robert Sheckley deserves a mention, not least for the odd parallels between his (little-known) 'Dimension of Miracles' and the bestselling Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, by Douglas Adams. Who, admittedly, was smart and funny himself. But Sheckley was first to describe meeting a planet designer who took an order from a particularly difficult client -- couldn't understand that if you wanted thousands of fjords on top you needed to balance them aesthetically with an Africa. Australia was a whim, and clouds were a design error - but you can't win 'em all.

- Is it some kind of plot?

Pynchon's got you by more than just the nose, compadre...

Every spoon in the world will bend at noon GMT, but first all the boy spoons have to marry the girl spoons.

For an intelligent comic novel with a (convent-educated) spoon as protagonist, I recommend 'Skinny Legs and All' by Tom Robbins, which also features a giant motorized turkey and a Jew and an Arab who open a New York restaurant together, and Salome turns up to perform the dance of the seven veils.

No decapitation deal was needed this time round. Or - as the original Salome is reputed to have said at the working breakfast with Herod where they ironed out the details: "Right, let me just decap ..."