Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts

from the archives of Saturday Night Live

I remember how my great uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it, and no paint, because he had whittled off the paint.

Many people never stop to realize that a tree is a living thing, not that different from a tall leafy dog that has roots and is very quiet.

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words: "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and so is mankind.

To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.

Children need encouragement, so if a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way, he develops a good, lucky feeling.

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe, but the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed, and roll around until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go, "Hey, I'm Vine Man."

I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you're having a good idea but it's just eggs hatching.

It's easy to sit there and say you'd like more money, and I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy, just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they're thinking, you can throw a real grenade.

People laugh when I say that I think a jellyfish is one of the most beautiful things in the world. What they don't understand is, I mean a jellyfish with long blonde hair.

When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call the police, but then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.

It makes me mad when people say I turned and ran like a scared rabbit. Maybe it was like an angry rabbit, who was running to go fight in another fight, away from the first fight.

When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different.

I guess of all my uncles, I liked Uncle Caveman the best. We called him Uncle Caveman because he lived in a cave, and because sometimes he'd eat one of us. Later on, we found out he was a bear.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

Today, I accidentally stepped on a snail on the sidewalk in front of our house, and I thought, "I too am like that snail. I build a defensive wall around myself - a shell if you will - but my shell isn't made out of a hard protective substance. Mine is made out of tinfoil and paper bags."

As the evening sky faded from a salmon color, to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint.

I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver, and since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up real quick and hand it to him.

If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone.

We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients, but we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.

The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.