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