In addition to presaging Douglas Adams and his Restaurant at the End of the Universe, this quote from S.J Perelman demonstrates the proper use of the word “humbug”:

What floored me, actually, wasn’t that the veal had found a way to communicate–a more or less inevitable development, once you accepted the basic premise of Elsie, the Borden cow–but rather its smarmy and masochistic pitch. Here, for the first time in human experience,a supposedly inanimate object, a cutlet, had broken through the barrier and revealed itself as a creature with feelings and desires. Did it signalize its liberation with ecstasy, cry out some exultant word of deliverance, or even underplay it with a quiet request like “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you”? No; the whole message reeked of self-pity, of invalidism, of humbug. It was a snivelling, eunuchoid plea for special privilege, a milepost of Pecksniffery. It was disgusting.

–S.J. Perelman
I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, A Matrix Of Lean Meat
New Yorker Magazine
1953
From the Fierce Pajamas Anthology