These are responses to a contest sponsored by OMNI magazine:
Grand Prize Winner:
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast
is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down.
I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two
will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered
cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with
Chicago.
Runners-up:
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number
of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at
an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce
all the worlds great literary works in Braille.
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure
on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums
unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to
even it out.
Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they
have no alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate
ideas at a faster rate.
The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just
as a figure skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are
brought in close to the body, the cutting of tall trees may cause
our planet to spin dangerously fast.
Honorable Mentions:
Birds take off at sunrise. On the opposite side of the world,
they are landing at sunset. This causes the earth to spin on
its axis.
The reason hot-rod owners raise the backs of their cars is that
it's easier to go faster when you're always going downhill.
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant.
If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian
"pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest,
causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl
wells."