A surly English overseer is standing at the entrance to a construction site in London. It’s a filthy wet day. He sees approaching him a shabby figure, with a clay pipe clenched in mouth and a battered raincoat, and scowlingly thinks, another effing Mick on the scrounge. The Irishman shambles up to him and asks if there’s any casual job going. „You don’t look to me ,“ says the supervisor, „as if you know the difference between a girder and a joist.“ „I do too,“ says the Irishman indignantly, „The first of them wrote Faust and the second one wrote Ulysses.“ (Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty and War)
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Thomas Pynchon walks into a bar. „Hey! that’s the famous author Thomas Pynchon!“ cries a patron. (The joke is twofold, Pynchon is a known recluse and wouldn’t dare chance a visit to a bar, and also would not likely be recognized.)“ (nn)
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Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a café, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. The waitress comes out and asks him if he would like to order. „Yes madame, I would like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.“ The waitress hurries back inside, and just as quickly comes back out and says to Sartre „I’m so very sorry monsieur, but we seem to be out of cream. Would you like it with no milk instead?“ (posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydrew)