Word: joker
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...petition a vote on crucial issues. With two hundred signers, a three-quarter vote then bound the Council to act in accordance with the student opinion. Dropping the provision will enable the Council to act more efficiently, its leaders tell us. No longer will it be bothered by the "joker element" of students that introduces crackpot referenda...
...Council obviously has acted on the strength of its experience with the semi-serious abolitionist movement of last spring, the only "joker" referendum that has shown up in recent years. But one disagreeable occurrence is not enough to warrant revision of the constitution, which is designed to provide general control of the Council's activity. Some students may abuse their right to control the Council, but this is no excuse for eliminating the right entirely...
...rarely does Editor Weyer get trapped by a nature faker. Once he printed a letter about a whale swallowing a man, written by "Egerton Y. Davis Jr.," an "eyewitness." A reader hastened to point out that the "eyewitness" was using a pseudonym of the late great physician and practical joker Sir William Osler. What Weyer should also have known: there is no authenticated instance in natural history of a whale swallowing a man. Last December, Weyer had his printing ink mixed with tangy pine chemicals to give the magazine an "outdoor" smell. When allergic readers wrote watery-eyed letters...
...husband, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Andrew Madsen. They drank bourbon-and-Coke, played "Pass the Kleenex,"*and Yvette twitted her Georgia-born host, another U.S. officer, on his Dixie drawl. "O.K.," responded the airman good-naturedly, "how do you say it in Brook-lynese?" Sensitive Yvette slapped the joker full in the face and demanded that her husband take her home immediately. Andy Madsen, a Californian, was too busy laughing to pay much attention. He tossed her the keys to the family car, and Yvette stormed out alone...
...Lady Takes a Sailor (Warner) pursues its laughs with the single-mindedness of a determined practical joker. A low-comedy farce about sedate professional people, it douses the characters with paint, runs them down with trick automobiles, and sticks them with pitchforks. The plot maneuvers Jane Wyman, director of a consumers' research institute, into Dennis Morgan's top-secret navy sea tractor. Jane's reputation in her job depends on proving that she was actually underseas with Morgan, Morgan's on suppressing the film she shot in his craft. Most of the gags are pretty thin...