Jokes!
R., my girlfriend, partner, and better half in virtually every way — I am undeniably better at first person shooters, but that may be it — has a single weakness (well, two if you count Australian shepherd puppies), her kryptonite if you will. It is a joke, and a very silly one at that, which she first heard when she was young. Despite having told it dozens, if not hundreds of times since, if she even thinks of it now, will cause her to fall into an uncontrollable fit of laughter for a good 20 minutes, perhaps longer. I say having told it many times, but that is not true. Each time she attempts to tell it she makes it about three sentences in and then begins to laugh too hard to speak.
The joke, which I must repeat is very, very silly, goes something like this:
There is a restaurant near where I used to live that advertises its ability to make any dish whatsoever. The proprietors are so confident, in fact, that they promise a reward of $1000 and free meals for a year to anyone who is able to order a dish they cannot make.
Naturally, people are always trying to win the contest by ordering the most outrageous things. I remember, for example, the time a man ordered giraffe hoof soup, a steaming hot bowl of which his server promptly brought to his table.
Then there was the time when I witnessed a woman ordering blackened angler fish fillets with a side of Shenzhen Nongke orchid-blossom salad, which she was served. As she so clearly enjoyed the dish I ordered the same for myself!
For many years I ate at the restaurant at least weekly, and in all that time they were never stumped. Until, that is, my last visit.
On that occasion a young woman, clearly new to town, asked about the contest and upon hearing the details was determined to win. “I’ll have an elephant ear sandwich!” she proclaimed, to which her server confidently replied, “Coming right up.” He disappeared into the kitchen and after several minutes of what I have no doubt was increasingly panicked searching, I overheard the server telling one of the owners, “Uh, sir. I think we’re going to have to pay this woman the $1,000 bucks.”
To which the owner replied, “Impossible! What did she order?”
“An elephant ear sandwich, sir.”
“Ah, see? You are mistaken. We have plenty of elephant ears. I just signed off on a new shipment this morning!”
“I know, sir, but the thing is… we’re out of really big buns.”
I will give you a few moments to recover.
Back with me? OK. For R., I need only say the phrase “really big buns” and she is slayed. I frequently use this fact to my advantage when it is clear that I am losing an argument. “Oh yeah! Well, REALLY BIG BUNS!” And I win by forfeit.
Anyway, are there any jokes that you simply cannot help laughing at, no matter how silly and how many times you’ve heard them? If so, what are the?! Tell me! I must know so that if you and I were to get into an argument, I could easily win. Also so I can tell them at parties.
No actual elephants were harmed in the making of this really, really cheesy joke.
I can’t imagine any joke retaining the necessary novelty to provoke a response repeatedly over time.
Also, despite having a pretty good memory and decent sense of humor, I have real difficulty even REMEMBERING jokes (which you’d think would help with the “novelty” aspect, but no…I’ll remember it just in time to go “yeah, I’ve heard that one” right after the punchline.)Report
I’m absolutely terrible at remembering jokes, but that one is easy because all you have to remember is the structure and the punchline, and you can make the rest up.
I imagine there probably are jokes that I would find hilarious over and over again, but I can’t remember them.Report
I’m remembering a rather literal punch, delivered to a special needs kid.
The story wasn’t funny the first time I heard it, but it improves the more I think about it.Report
Whaaaaaah?Report
Well, the joke the kid was telling went something like this:
“Do you know why Hitler had such a low gas bill?”
Jewish kid’s response: predictable silence.
“He had gas ovens!”
Then the kid got punched and the Jewish kid who did it didn’t get in trouble in the slightest.
(I think the humor is in someone telling an extremely offensive joke and not realizing how stupidly offensive it is. Well, that and I’m silly enough to smirk over a real “punch” line.)Report
I… I… so far you’ve given us a “special needs kid” being punched, and a joke about the Holocaust. I don’t even know what to say.Report
Is there anything to say?Report
Again, it wasn’t funny the first time.
[I do know people capable of telling actually funny Holocaust jokes — this isn’t one of them.]Report
Well one problem is that you seem to have screwed up the joke anyway, to the point that it doesn’t even make sense. Now if you switched the first line to “Why did Hitler have such a low ELECTRIC bill?” then the punchline makes sense. And assuming the teller wasn’t actually a special needs kid would certainly deserve a punch. Because hate. But the way you tell it it couldn’t draw anything BUT a blank stare.
Now I was told a holocaust joke (by an Austrian) that was clever and by certain technical standards ‘funny’. Because it had a recognizable hook much like a bad pun. Which didn’t make up for the fact that it was totally hateful and probably deserving of some violent push back. But at least it was by structure an actual joke.Report
Some people have no sense of humor.Report
I’m pretty sure that the joke should go like this:
“Why did Hitler have such a low energy bill?”
“He had gas ovens!”
Because having gas ovens as opposed to not having gas ovens would make your gas bill higher, but having gas ovens as opposed to electric ones would make your overall energy bill lower. Oh, never mind….
[I play Card Against Humanity, but only with really, really good friends, who understand that I don’t mean it.]Report
This one doesn’t slay me, but I still get a chuckle out of it.
Johnny is four years old. He was home one day, being a pest to his mother, so she said, “Johnny, why don’t you go across the street and watch the builders working on the new house. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Johnny was gone all morning and mom was in heaven. She got the house cleaned, the laundry done, and even had time for a relaxing bath. When he came home his mother asked him what he learned.
Johnny replied, “Well, first you put the fucking door up on the fucking hinges, then the son of a bitch doesn’t fit, so you have to take the fucking door back down off the fucking hinges. Then you have to take a cunt hair off each side and put the fucking door back up on the fucking hinges & see if the mother fucker will work.”
Johnny’s mother was horrified, “Johnny, we DO NOT use that kind of language in this house! you go to your room and wait until your father gets home!” When Johnny’s dad got home, he went into Johnny’s room and said, “Son, your mother says you said some very naughty things today, can you tell me what you said.
Johnny replied, “Sure dad! Well, first you put the fucking door up on the fucking hinges, then the son of a bitch doesn’t fit, so you have to take the fucking door back down off the fucking hinges. Then you have to take a cunt hair off each side and put the fucking door back up on the fucking hinges & see if the mother fucker will work.”
Finally, his father sighed & said, “Johnny, I want you to go outside & find me the biggest switch you can.”
To which Johnny replied, “Fuck you dad, that’s the Electrician’s job.”Report
Did you hear about the guy from Jersey who was arrested making sacrifices at the Aquarium in Seattle?
He was charged with crossing state lines for Immortal Porpoises.Report
As I know it:
There was a zoo whose great attraction was its porpoises, which were unaccountably popular given that they aren’t that exciting when compared to monkeys and lions and such. The reason why was only recently discovered.
It turns out the porpoises were in fact vampires, and had entered a dark pact with the zookeeper – in exchange for a life-extending supply of seagull chicks for their unnatural rituals, the vampiric porpoises used their mind-control powers to cause human patrons to make substantial donations to the zoo foundation, and to cause the other zoo employees to avoid troublesome inquiries.
In order to conceal the horrific goings-on, the zookeeper had installed a dark temple with a satanic altar behind the lions’ cage, with an underwater tunnel allowing the porpoises to swim there. Each full moon, he laced the the lions’ evening meal with tranquilizers to enable access for himself, and brought a box of seagull chicks to the concealed door at the back of the lion cage.
This finally fell apart when a new employee whose mind had not yet been clouded by the porpoises saw the zookeper step right over a sleeping lion with a cheeping box under his arm. He was arrested for transporting young gulls across a sedate lion for immortal porpoises.Report
I lack the bravery to post some of the ruder jokes I knowReport
My previous assistant had an ex-husband who was…Um, there’s no nice way to say this, but unintelligent and uneducated. They had one child together. When she was delivering the baby, he was watching and was stunned to find that after the baby came, there is more! He turns to her and the doctor with a terrified look on his face and said “is that your liver?!”
I once had to leave my belly dancing class early because I couldn’t stop laughing after I told the story. Actual story, not a joke! It’s rare that I can even get through the story because I laugh so hard the whole time.Report
well, it does sort of look like a fresh liverReport
Yeah, but they really don’t taste anything alike.Report
I’m gonna go ahead and call that an “overshare,” Tod.Report
So when I was a kid, my aunt and cousin lived with us for a while. One night, one of my cats had kittens on my cousin (4 yrs. old,) bed. Cousin woke up to find the mother eating the placenta. (Animals, do that; even herbivores like cows. Lots of nutrients.) She screamed.
My aunt quietly explained what was going on.
And my cousin listened, eyes getting bigger by the minute, until her mom finished.
“I’m never having babies,” my cousin responded.Report
Yeah. I get that it’s nature and stuff, but… yuck.
For a while in the 90s when people we knew were having babies, it became a trend to freeze the damn thing and then on the kids first birthday, thaw it out, dig a hole, toss it in and plant a tree over it.
I kind of liked the symbolism of it all, but I could never bring myself to do it because… yuck.Report
Good thing you’re not a doctor.
At a hippie friend’s home birth I attended (she wanted my sweetie’s band to play while she gave birth,) the Midwife and her apprentice, both from an offshoot Mennonite sect, gave us all an anatomy lesson on the wonders of the placenta as she examined it post birth. It was fascinating to hear this woman, who pretty much denied science as you and I think of it, get all full-bored scientific over a placenta. One of those moments that made me realize how important it is to find our commonalities instead of focusing on our differences.Report
Q: what’s the last thing that goes through a mosquitoes mind when he hits your windshield?Report
The glass?Report
drop the ‘g’ and the ‘l.’Report
Well, he doesn’t have gas or grass to contribute to the ride.Report
Wrecked him? It *KILLED* him!Report
boolean operators, @glyph and, not or.Report
Booleans? Do you talk to you mother with that mouth?! 😉Report
Three things come to mind, even though one’s not even a joke.
All three, however, make me laugh every damn time despite the fact that I totally understand they aren’t actually funny.
1. The Interrupting Cow knock knock knock joke always makes me laugh out loud, despite the fact that it might be the stupidest joke in the world.
2. If my sons ever want to make me laugh uncontrollably, they just say “Hey dad: Rich Whitey!” It’s a reference to this actual news story, which I can’t think of without totally losing it to the giggles.
3. This joke:
St Peter needs a break, and asks Jesus to watch the Pearly Gates for a bit as a favor. Jesus is amenable, but isn’t really sure how to do it.
“It’s simple,” says Peter. “When someone comes up, just ask them a few questions about their life on Earth to make sure they’re in the right place. You know, like what they did for a living, what kind of person they were, if they worked hard to be a good parent, that kind of stuff. Then let ’em in or redirect them downstairs. It’s easy.” Jesus writes all of this down earnestly.
So a little later Jesus is standing guard and an old man come up and asks to be let into Heaven.
“Sure thing,” says Jesus, “but I have to ask you a few routine questions first.” He checks his notes. “Um, let’s see… What did you do for a living on Earth?”
“I worked in a wood shop,” said the old man.
“Really?,” says JC. “Me too! Me and my dad both.”
“What a coincidence!,” exclaims the old man. “My son also worked with wood. Though to be honest, I haven’t seen him since he was a boy.”
“Huh,” says Jesus thoughtfully. “I haven’t really seen my dad since I was a boy.” They both stop and look at one another, wondering.
“Oh, it couldn’t be,” the old man finally says. “And to be honest, I wasn’t even the boy’s real father. Actually, he never had a real father, or at least not in the traditional sense.”
Jesus gasped and exclaimed, “Just like me!”
The two looked at one another, hope beginning to grow. Finally, the old man said, “This is going to sound like a strange question, but I don’t suppose you ever had nails in your hands… ?”
Jesus is overjoyed, throws his arms around the old man and cries, “Papa! I’m so glad to have found you!”
The old man hugs him back and says, “And I’m so glad to have found you, Pinocchio!”Report
My kids love the Interrupting Cow joke, but they don’t really get the “interrupting” part. They just like yelling “MOOOO!”Report
When my son was little I told him a lot of knock knock jokes. He thought they were hilarious, but didn’t quite get how they worked, so he used to frequently tell me this joke:
Son: Knock knock!
Me: Who’s there?
Son: Pee pee.
Me: Pee pee who?
Son: Pee pee!Report
Yeah, that’s pretty much what goes on. They tried to make their own version with an Interrupting Chicken, but again, it’s just an excuse to scream “BAWK!”Report
“Interrupting Sloth” usually kills.Report
Knock knock!
Who’s there?
Interrupting sloth.
Interrupting sloth who?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
[Sloth Sound.]Report
What does a sloth sound like? Is it like that sound that Perry the Platypus makes?Report
They squeak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tdokh1KYuQReport
Also the interrupting starfish is a gooder
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting starfish.
Interrupting sta-
(stick your hand on the person’s face)Report
I’m going to go find someone to tell that one too right now!Report
Interrupting sloth always kills me, but dear god that starfish one might have beaten it.
My other favourite:
Knock knock
Who’s there?
The German secret service
The German sec-
VE VILL ASK ZE QUESTIONSReport
Those Air Force guys, now, they got these bombs that go up to a bunker door, and they go “knock knock”, and the guys in the bunker go “who’s there”, and the bomb goes “kah”, and the guys in the bunker are all “kah WHO?”, and the bomb goes “kah BOOM!”Report
I also find that the reverse knock knock joke can entertain me.Report
I admit this cracked me up.Report
Here’s a knock-knock joke at my house.
Comedian: Knock kn-
My dog: WOOFWOOOFWOOFWOOFWOOOFWOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOFWOOFWOOFWOOFWOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOFReport
The Pinocchio joke is perfect!Report
As it happens, the Pope dies at the exact same moment as a lawyer. They both approach the Pearly Gates together.
“Welcome!” says St. Peter. “Your Holiness! Counselor! So glad to see you both. Let me show you where you’ll be spending the rest of eternity. Your Holiness, you’re up first.”
And so they walk through the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter shows the recently-deceased Pope the very nice 2+1 condominium they’ve arranged. There’s a bunch of other deceased-and-ascended Popes sharing the condo complex with him. They’ve got a decent-sized swimming pool and some better-than-okay landscaping.
“Very nice,” the recently-deceased Pope says. “Mind if I tag along with my new friend the lawyer here?”
“Of course not!” And so they move on to the recently-deceased lawyer’s estate. And it’s an Estate! A massive mansion on rolling hills with equestrian facilities. Luxury Everything. Not just a view of the lake, but a private dock for the yacht. A wine cellar that goes on for city blocks.
“St. Peter,” the Pope says. “I don’t want to seem an ingrate, because the Popes’ condo is nice. But this is really over the top and… well, I was the Pope. Why does my friend the attorney get such a lavish estate?”
“Your Holiness,” says St. Peter, abashed. “It’s about allocating our resources. You see, over the centuries we’ve got a lot of Popes here. Lawyers, not so much.”
* * *
A man shops in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He sees a gold statue of a rat on display. The shopkeeper initially refuses to sell the statute to the man.
“It is cursed,” the shopkeeper says.
“Ah, I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” says the man. “I was born in the Year of the Rat, so sell it to me.”
“Okay, it’s a hundred dollars, but I warned you! And no refunds!” And so the shopkeeper sells the rat statute to the man. The man begins to walk down the street.
Now, San Francisco is California’s oldest city and, to its shame, it’s not totally unknown to see a rat on the street. But the man in our story does think it’s a little unusual to see a rat not only look up out of the sewer grate, but to jump on to the sidewalk and start following him.
It’s even more unusual, he thinks, when a second rat does it too. And then a third, and a fourth.
Now, our hero isn’t dumb. He figures out the game pretty quickly. He walks, then he jogs, then he runs. The rats keep following him. More and more of them as he goes, until by the time he makes it to the piers, there’s a flood of rats behind him, a wave of brown and black-furred nasty vermin making eeep eeep eeep noises and swishing their nasty, bald tails.
He steps onto a bench out on the end of the pier, vaults up onto a light post, and hurls the golden statute out into the Bay. Sure enough, all the rats jump off the end of the pier, and drown to death.
When the rats are all gone, he steps down and brushes himself off. He walks. He walks back to Chinatown.
He finds the shop.
The shopkeeper looks at him and nods his head skeptically. “Oh, I see. You found out about the curse. Now I bet you want a refund. No refunds!”
“No,” the man says, “I don’t want a refund. But I do wonder… do you have any statutes of lawyers?”
* * *
It is the worst time of the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror has Parisians afraid of their neighbors and business associates. None dare miss the executions.
Brought forth to meet Dr. Guillotine’s engine are a priest, an engineer, and a lawyer. Lots are drawn, and the priest is slated for execution first.
The priest is placed in the slot, and restrained. The blade is drawn up, up, up, and then released! FOOOSH it rushes down! And it stops, mere centimeters above the priest’s neck!
“It is a miracle!” the priest cries. “God has spared my life, can you do no less?” And the executioner is moved, and the priest is let go.
But next it is the lawyer. Who is also restrained in the guillotine. And the blade rises, and FOOOSH it drops! And again, it stops just barely at the last possible second!
“We must respect precedent!” the lawyer cries. “The priest was spared, so too should I be!” And the executioner is persuaded that this is correct, and the lawyer is let go.
Now, the engineer is brought up to the guillotine.
“Wait a minute!” the engineer cries. “There’s your problem, you’ve got a knot in the rope!”Report
Lawyers know the best lawyer jokes.Report
Nah. There are really only three lawyer jokes.
The rest are true stories.Report
Every lawyer I ever met knows this joke – and hates it. Too close to home.
“What do you call 40 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”
“A good start.”Report
Two lawyers went to the shopping mall. One said to the other,
“Let’s go to the food court, and try some food.”Report
Three guys — two $SMART and one $DUMB — are captured by $NEFARIOUS_GROUP. Their captors declare that, in accordance with the revolutionary spirit, they’re to be shot as examples of what will soon happen to all capitalist pigs.
So they stand the first $SMART up against a wall, and the head revolutionary says “Ready…aim…” And the $SMART says “tornado! A tornado is coming! Run for your lives, it’s a tornado!” The revolutionaries scatter, and $SMART escapes.
The stand the second $SMART up against the wall, and the head revolutionary says “Ready…aim…” and the second $SMART says “uh, a flood! A terrible flood! Get to high ground, it’s a flood!” The revolutionaries scatter, and the other $SMART escapes.
So they try again, because they want to execute somebody, and they stand $DUMB up against the wall. The head revolutionary says “Ready…AIM…” and $DUMB yells “Fire! Fire!”Report
Ah, engineer jokes. I have a friend who’s an anthropologist, who says that you can see how any particular group is perceived by looking at the jokes told about them. I’ve always thought this one played on every personality flaw that people level at engineers…
A priest, a doctor, and an engineer are playing golf. The group ahead of them is incredibly slow. Finally, they stop the grounds keeper and ask what the deal is. “Oh, those are three firefighters who were blinded fighting a fire in our clubhouse a few years ago. The club lets them play for free any day they want.” “How brave of them to go on,” says the priest. “I’ll say a special prayer for them. Perhaps the Lord will restore their sight.” “Yes,” says the doctor. “And I’ll speak to my colleagues who are ophthalmologists. Perhaps there are new surgical techniques available that could restore their vision.” After a lengthy pause, the engineer asks, “Why can’t they just play at night?”Report
Three statisticians are out duck hunting. A flock of ducks takes flight right front of them, and all three set their sights on the same one.
The first statistician shoots, and misses 2 feet to the right.
The second statistician shoots, and misses 2 feet to the left.
The third statistician yells, “We got it!”Report
Ah, engineer jokes. I have a friend who’s an anthropologist, who says that you can see how any particular group is perceived by looking at the jokes told about them. I’ve always thought this one played on every personality flaw that people level at engineers…
And you can see how any group sees itself by looking at jokes it tells about itself. Here’s a computer programmer joke:
So a computer company in California sent a hardware engineer, a computer programmer, and their manager to a convention in Las Vegas. Because the company was trying to save money, they had to drive there and back. The trip there was fine, but on the trip back, as they were coming down the mountains, their brakes went out. They scraped off guardrails and mountain sides and finally rolled to a stop in a runaway truck ramp.
They all piled out of the car and took stock of the situation.
The manager says, “I’ve got no cell signal, and we’ve seen no traffic for some time. It’s getting dark, and it’s going to get cold. Any ideas?”
The engineers had been looking under the car, and says “I think it might be possible to rig the brakes halfway closed and we can slowly roll down the mountain. It will destroy the wheels and squeal something horrible, but we’ll get down.”
The computer programmer frowned at both of them. “Guys, before we do anything, we need to push it back up the hill and see if it does it again.”Report
And you can see how any group sees itself by looking at jokes it tells about itself.
I’m a sport fencer. I’m not sure what it means, but every fencing joke I’ve ever heard is an inside joke, potentially funny only to those who know about the sport and its internal culture. Eg, an old joke asks what’s the difference between foilists, epeeists, and sabrists? Foilists complain about the cost of their clothes, epeeists complain about the cost of their weapons, and sabrists complain about the cost of their women.Report
@michael-cain
I’m a sport fencer. I’m not sure what it means, but every fencing joke I’ve ever heard is an inside joke, potentially funny only to those who know about the sport and its internal culture.
That is almost certainly because almost no one thinks of fencing as a sport, or even something that exist at all.Report
What’s the difference between an introverted engineer and an extroverted engineer?
An extroverted engineer looks at your shoes while talking to you.Report
Back in 1993, there was a serious effort (by the head of the California Bar Association, no less) to define lawyer jokes as hate crimes. Which sounds like a lawyer joke.
(It was in response to this shooting, which was a horrific tragedy, but it’s not as if the killer became unbalanced because of the one about the skid marks.)Report
I know lawyers who will get up and walk out of the room if someone tells a lawyer joke.
“Get over yourself, dude,” is my internal reaction. Externally, I usually try to join in the fun.Report
How many Vietnam veterans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
YOU DON’T KNOW! YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!!Report
How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
THAT’S NOT FUNNY.Report
How many online interlocutors?
I’m not going to do your research for you.Report
How many mice?
The question is not how many, but how did they get in there in the first place.Report
I actually wrote one: How many Ramones does it take? 1-2-3-4!
It’s… well, you sort of have to be an old punk rocker to enjoy it. There’s an ongoing joke about that between me and Mickey Desadist, the singer from a legendary Canadian punk band the Forgotten Rebels. Mickey liked the joke and said he was going to steal it from me after I told it during one of our band’s shows. And then, to take the piss: “But, that’s alright, Rufus- you guys stole plenty from our band!” So, when we opened for them, I made posters that read, in huge letters, THE NOBLE SAVAGES and very small “with special guests, the Forgotten Rebels.”Report
Hey! Ho!Report
All you Cretins on the Floor!
4-5-6-7
All you Cretins go to Heaven!Report
How many libertarians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
The lightbulb should screw in itself!
How many Princeton students does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Two. One to mix the cocktails and the other to call the Butler.
How many psychologists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
One but the lightbulb has to want to change.Report
So it turns out that Heaven assigns you a car based on how faithful to your partner you were in life. Three guys get there about the same time. The first says “well, I’m dead now, so I guess I should admit that I was a real horndog, I cheated on my wife a whole bunch of times.” He gets a used Honda Civic with no A/C and a really cheap stereo. The second says “well, there was this one time on a business trip I just was too damn lonely and I met this really nice girl in a bar, but that was the only time”. He gets a decent sedan, blandly comfy in that American middle-class way. The third says “after I was married, other people basically stopped existing for me as sexual beings.” He gets a top-level BMW coupe.
So a couple of weeks later, the three guys pull up at a stop light, and the guys in the Civic and the sedan see the guy in the BMW crying. “What’s the matter, you’ve got this nice car,” they say. “Yeah, but I just saw my wife,” the guy sobs, “and she was on a skateboard!”
*******
A woman is walking along a beach, and she finds a lamp. She rubs it, and a genie pops out. “You’ve freed me, and you may wish for anything you like,” the genie says, “but your husband receives twice what you ask for.” “But I just got divorced!” the woman says. “Too bad, but that’s the rule,” replies the genie. The woman thinks for a second, then says “okay, scare me half to death.”Report
It’s a little known fact that Pope John Paul II was a bit of a speed demon, and had the popemobile built with a ridiculously powerful engine and high performance suspension. Often on the drive home from some official occasion, he would have his chauffeur switch places with him, and find a quiet stretch of road to take the car through its paces.
One day he’s pulled over, going a full 50 mph over the limit. When the cops finally managed to catch him, one of them walks up to the car, itching write up the maniac they’d just caught. After a few minutes though, he sends him away with a warning.
He comes back to the squad car, visibly shaken, and his partner says, “You let them off with a warning? They were doing 50 over! Who was that anyway?” The cop replies, “I don’t know, but his driver is the pope.”Report
Heisenberg is pulled over for speeding, the cop walks up to the car and says, “Do you know how fast you were going sir?”
Heisenberg says, “I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure where I was.”Report
Nice.
Speaking of Heisenberg, this might a key to a Universal Theory of Everything, and knowing where you are andhow fast you’re going.Report
I am the one who drives!Report
Erwin Schroedinger is out running errands with Heisenberg, gets tired and asks Werner if he could drive for a bit. They get pulled over because of Heisenberg’s lead foot driving style.
Cop asks about speed, and H.again gives the reply that he doesn’t know what the speed was, but he knows where he is. Cop asks for the registration, S. tells him its his auto & complies.
Cop then asks them to open the trunk. H. has the keys and goes to the back of the car. on inspection, he asks if Schroedinger knew there was a dead cat in the trunk. He replies “Well, I do now…”Report
Since golfers tend to mistake the sport for a religion…
God and St. Peter go golfing one day. On the first hole, St. Peter hits first: lovely drive, 240 yards straight down the fairway. God slices his drive into the pond, where a turtle picks it up and swims to the surface. An eagle swoops down and snatches the turtle up. As the eagle flies higher and higher, the frightened turtle pulls his head in and drops the ball. The ball lands on the green, rolls across, and drops into the hole. St. Peter turns to God and asks, “Are you going to fool around all day, or are we going to play golf?”
On a gorgeous Sunday morning the priest calls his assistant to cover for him at church and heads for the golf course. The course is empty except for the priest. The priest plays better than he ever has in his life; every shot is perfect. Up in Heaven, St. Peter and God are watching. “Why are you giving him such a miraculous round of golf?” asks St. Peter. “Why aren’t you punishing him?” “Well,” answers God, “Who’s he going to be able to tell about it?”
One day St. Peter and Jesus go golfing. They get to the third hole, a par three with a long carry over a pond. “What would Arnold Palmer hit here?” asks Jesus. “A seven-iron,” responds St. Peter. Jesus takes out his seven iron, tees up the ball and hits it. The shot comes up short, plunk in the water. Jesus tries twice more, with the same result. Finally, Jesus tells St. Peter, “You go on ahead. I’ll meet you on the green.” Then Jesus walks out across the pond to retrieve the balls. Another group passing by sees this, and demands of St. Peter, “Who does that guy think he is, Jesus Christ?” “No,” says St. Peter, “He thinks he’s Arnold Palmer.”Report
Lee Trevino was playing golf with some friends when a thunderstorm started. Instead of dashing for cover, he held up a one-iron. “Lee, get behind something!” his friends yelled. “Nah,” he replied, “not even God can hit a one-iron.”Report
And a shaggy-dog story for Schilling (whom I still owe a more serious math post)…
Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of people of Polish descent from the Chicago area arranged for a charter flight back to the mother country for a visit. On the final approach to the airport at Krakow, the pilot came on the intercom and announced, “If you’ll look out the port-side windows, you can see the famous Basilica for Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus.” Everyone on the plane leaped across the aisle to look. The sudden weight shift threw the plane into a spin from which the pilot couldn’t recover, with all on board dying in the ensuing crash. The moral of this tragedy? Too many Poles in the left half-plane make the system unstable.Report
So there’s a farmer with three daughters, and they’ve all made plans for Friday night. As it gets to be about 6:00, all three of them are getting ready to go, and the doorbell rings. The farmer goes to the door to find a young man standing there, who says “Hi, I’m Freddy, I’m here for Betty, we’re going steady, is she ready?” The farmer nods and they both leave.
A few minutes later, the doorbell rings again and another young man is standing there. He says to the farmer “Hello, my name is Joe, I’m here for Floe, we’re going to the show, is she ready to go?” Again, the farmer nods and the young man leaves with the second daughter.
A few more minutes pass, and sure enough the doorbell rings a third time. Yet another young man is standing there. He says to the farmer “Hi, my name is Chuck-” and the farmer shoots him.Report
I enjoy the giraffe/lion joke form “28 Days Later” entirely too much, but it requires a British accent to really land it.Report
Three statisticians go hunting. All three spot a deer at the same time. The first statistician fires and misses ten feet to the left. The second fires and misses ten feet to the right. The third stands up and yells “I HIT IT!”
—
That’s probably by far the tamest joke I know. I’ve got way more in the dark, incredibly disturbing category. If those are kosher, I’ll toss some of ’em up on here.Report
Crap, I just noticed Chris beat me to that joke by about 10 minutes. I’ll do better next time, I swear.Report
Whats the commenting policy on dead baby jokes?Report
Best to avoid naming specific dead babies. (Which is a shame, because I know this great one about Charles Lindbergh Jr.)Report
We have rot13 for any joke that you feel you *NEED* to tell but don’t want to be precisely searchable in relationship to your name.
Fb gur Enoov fnlf “Bhg bs jung?”Report
Ubj qb lbh trg 100 qrnq onovrf vagb gur gehax bs n Ohvpx?
N oyraqre.
Ubj qb lbh trg 100 qrnq onovrf bhg bs gur gehax bs n Ohvpx?
Gbfgvgbf!Report
This one doesn’t really work online, because it is all about delivering the punchline with 100% earnestness and some slight creepiness…
Ubj znal qrnq onovrf pna svg va n fhvgpnfr?
Frira.Report
“Tostitos” is just one of those words that’s funny on its own anyway, and with sufficient enthusiasm here it works gangbusters.Report
@glyph
That is what sold it for me. Especially when my otherwise very reserved and mild-mannered roommate got drunk and delivered it, complete with a little fingers dance and accent.Report
One of the main features of Hasidism in the 18th century was that each group thought their Rabbi had a direct pipeline to God and could use it do perform miracles. Whenever one group met another, this would invariably lead to a bragging contest.
“Once, our Rabbi had to ride way out into the country to give comfort to a dying man. He has just left the town when it began to rain as if the sky has opened up. He would have caught his death of cold, except that he called upon the Almighty. A circle surrounded him, and even though to his left, and to his right, and in front of him, and behind him, it continued to pour, within that circle it stayed dry. ”
“That’s nothing. Once our Rabbi was traveling from one town to another on a Friday afernoon. In the middle of the woods the wheel of his cart broke, and, by the time his driver could repair it, it was almost sundown. His choices were to stay the night where he was, and almost certainly be eaten by wolves, or to continue to ride and violate the Sabbath. So what do you think he did? He called upon the Almighty. A circle surrounded him, and even though to his left, and to his right, and in front of him, and behind him, it was the Sabbath, within that circle it was Thursday. “Report
Well, they aren’t jokes, but back in the day, I could quote several pieces of movie dialogue to my ex and she’d respond. They were “our thing” that always cracked us up.
“I got mind control on D ball”…..Report
A Software Quality Assurance professional walks into a bar. He orders a Run & Coke. Then he orders a Coke without the rum. Then he orders water. Then he orders gasoline. Then he orders an exercise bike. Then he orders a 643. Then he orders a salhgfadslf. Then he orders a null. Satisfied, he leaves.Report
The seminary professor called up the computer support tech, and told him, “This morning I printed out the syllabus for my course on the Synoptic Gospels, and it came out fine. This afternoon, I tried to print out the syllabus for my course on Postmodern Hermeneutics, and all I got was gibberish.”
The tech comes up to his office, looks around, and says “Well, what did you expect from a Canon printer ?”Report
It would have still been funny without the tech replying at all.Report
Good one!
Though if your lecture on Postmodern Hermeneutics isn’t gibberish, you’re doing it wrong.Report
I tried to post a follow-up punchline to that one based on a hacker ordering a (insert SQL injection drink name here) – but the post function actually rejected the post.
I think that’s probably actually funnier than my hastily thought-up joke.Report
(I tell this whenever I meet a girl my son is involved with)
So, has the boy told you he was born without eyelids?
No he hasn’t, how horrible!
It turned out to be no big deal, after his circumcision, they recreated them out of his foreskin.
???
Yes, but we had to sue the doctor.
Why?
The surgery left him cockeyed.Report
OMG you are a bastard! How your son hasn’t committed patricide yet…
Although the embarrassment is probably good for him, if the girls don’t go running for the hills.Report
This is the best thread I have ever started. I’ve been laughing all morning.Report
The computer scientist joke I remember goes something like this:
An electrical engineer, a hydraulics engineer, and a computer scientist were driving down the road when they noticed a really hot guy on the side of the road standing next to a broken down car. They pulled over and asked what was wrong. The guy said that his car would turn on, but it wouldn’t budge.
The electrical engineer said, “I see, this is obviously a problem with the electrical system. Pop the hood and let me take a look.” He fiddled around with the wiring for a few minutes and said, “Try it now,” but the car still wouldn’t budge.
So the hydraulics engineer said, “You know, I bet it’s a problem with the fuel system. Let me take a look.” So he fiddled around with the hoses for a few minutes and said, “Try it now,” but still nothing.
So the computer scientist said, “Have you tried turning the car off and then turning it back on again?”Report
This is a good joke, but why do we have to objectify the car owner like that?Report
At some point there was a version where the CS person is replaced with a Windows support specialist, who asks, “Have you tried closing all the windows, turning it off, turning it back on, and then opening the windows again?”
The situation may turn out to be more prophetic than we would like. Essentially all new cars these days will refuse to run, or run very poorly, if the ECU fails in certain ways.Report
Oh damn, that makes it much funnier.Report
If your car actually does start, but won’t move, turning the car off and back on might *actually* help, depending on the problem.
…of course, I am, in fact, a computer scientist. So maybe that’s just my bias showing.
Although in reality ‘turn it off and back on’ is ‘help desk’ stereotype…although computer science has a similar thing I reference in my joke above…namely, when we write a program and it crashes, we *immediately* run it again to make sure. Which seems extremely silly, but how replicable a bug is important information when trying to track it down.
Anyway, I once had a car problem you had to fix by turning the car off and back on, and, oddly, enough, it wasn’t even an electrical problem. It was a transmission problem, specifically, the car didn’t want to downshift from the higher gears down to first, so you’d get off the highway, and the thing would immediately stall.
Solution: When you get off the highway, pull over, put the car in park, turn it off, wait a minute, turn it on, then drive off.Report
It’s what I tell my internal Beta testers. Before you submit a JIRA, make sure you can replicate the error three times in a row after you’ve closed & reopened the program each time (we get memory leaks at times, which cause all sorts of transients that never happen again once the memory gets cleared).Report
Twenty-some years ago, I was working on a project involving high-reliability software systems. The vendor we were working with that built full-duplex hardware had kept meticulous records and could show that two lock-stepped 68020-class microprocessors would produce single bit differences on the external bus pins about once every 30 days. From time to time I wonder how often such faults occur in contemporary hardware…Report
The vendor we were working with that built full-duplex hardware had kept meticulous records and could show that two lock-stepped 68020-class microprocessors would produce single bit differences on the external bus pins about once every 30 days.
Or, alternately, the *recording device* detected differences when there were actually none. Can’t really tell, can you? 😉
From time to time I wonder how often such faults occur in contemporary hardware…
IIRC, we’re running up against the laws of physics in making processors denser, because we’ve started to get unavoidable current leakage.Report
I thought it was less physics & more materials science, in that physics will let us make them denser, if we can find & work with materials that will do it.Report
Don’t forget Rock’s Law: the cost of a leading edge fab in real dollars doubles every 48 months. A number of Far East foundry companies have announced that they can’t afford to build fabs that go below 20 nm. TSMC, the largest pure-foundry company, is struggling to bring 16 nm online profitably. Intel and Samsung have built 14 nm fabs. Intel can’t keep those lines full making their own products (insufficient demand for parts that actually require 14 nm), and is acting as a 14 nm foundry for chip companies that aren’t direct competitors. Several financial analysts have predicted that Intel and Samsung can probably afford 10 nm, but nothing smaller.Report
Never heard that one before. But then, IC chip production is so far outside my field. We do heat transfer analysis on IC chips, but they are usually modeled as solid chunks that produce X amount of heat that we need to efficiently draw away.Report
The hardware that monitored mismatches was itself triplex, and each piece periodically injected errors and noted whether the other two detected it. The processor boards were kind of amazing — a pair of 68020s surrounded by multiple massive gate-array chips that did the error detection. Motorola was satisfied that the setup was indeed detecting faults in the 68020 chips…Report
“No one saw that bug.”
“But I marked it P1 in JIRA!”
“Atlassian shrugged.”Report
Technically, if you have a memory leak that causes problems, you *do* have a bug. 😉
It’s just the bug is the memory leak, and not whatever random thing failed because it didn’t have enough memory.Report
@davidtc
Yeah, we know, we know. But the code is going on 15 years old & is pretty damn big, and written partly in Java, so finding the memory leaks is tricky enough, and since we do one major release a year, and two updates in-between, memory leaks appear as fast as you plug them.
I imagine this is how Venice public works feels at times…Report
Hmm? Java is less likely to have memory issues than, say, C++, where you’re going to have either leaks or smashes, and leaks are by far the lesser evil.Report
Guess what the rest of the code is written in…
(I mention Java because that is what the GUI is written in & most of our memory leaks come from the GUI & the JVM, but not all of them)Report
Q How many computer scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A None, that’s a hardware problem.
—
Q How many computer engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A None, it’ll be fixed in the drivers.
—
A computer scientist says to her flatmate, “I’m going to the store, do you need anything?” The flatmate replies “Get a gallon of milk, please. And if they have eggs, get a dozen.” An hour later, the computer scientist returns, sweaty and exhausted from carrying home twelve gallons of milk.Report
The computer scientist clearly misunderstood the flatmate’s instructions: Get a gallon of milk, and then, if there are eggs, get an additional dozen gallons of milk, which would total *thirteen* gallons. 😉
Although this may be premature optimization, as it assumes getting thirteen gallons is the same as getting one gallon and getting twelve gallons. Safest bet would be to get one gallon, bring it home, and then go back and get twelve, and take them home, and then let the compiler optimize it.Report
There are three religious truths:
1. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
2. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith.
3. Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store or at Hooters.Report
Why do you always invite 2 baptists to go fishing?
Because if you invite one, he’ll drink all your beer.Report
Two people walk into a bar.
The third one ducks.Report
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can’t.Report
Oh, now I can make my Wittgenstein joke:
There are two kinds of people in the world, those about whom one can speak.Report
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.Report
The correct response: Those are the same kinds of people!Report
There are two kinds of people in the world: those that pee in the ocean and those that lie about it.Report
There are 10 kinds of people in the word. Those who know binary, and those who don’t.
…and those who realize this joke is really in trinary.Report
An actor walks into a bar, and says “Can I get some glow tape on this?”
(The SM pulls out a stack of rehearsal notes pointing out that the actor has been walking through the same bar every day for weeks)Report
…and then the SM sighs and does it anyway.Report
Hillary Clinton was visiting an African village as part of her duties as Secretary of State. As the village leaders were giving her a tour a bunch of bandits drive up. Their leader calls out “Hand over your valuables or we will burn down your village!” But the villagers just laugh. Clinton ask why they’re laughing, and one of the village leaders says “These guys are useless, every week they threaten to burn down our village but they can’t so much as scorch a single shack, this time won’t be any different.” The bandit leader then lifts up a 5-year old girl who was sitting next to him and shouts back “But it will be different because this time we brought this little girl!” This naturally causes more laughter from the assembled villagers.
Clinton doesn’t laugh though. She tells the leaders “This is really serious, you should really let me handle this, my escort can run them off easily”. But the village leaders refuse “These guys have failed so many times before, this time will be no different”. So the leader of the bandits sets the girl on the ground, gives her a lighter and shoves her in the direction of the village. She runs toward it for a few step and then trips. The lighter flies out of her hand, lights in mid-air and goes spinning into the village’s generator which promptly explodes. Burning wreckage hits other flammable things causing a chain reaction that burns the village to the ground in minutes. The bandits drive off, laughing.
As the villagers stare in horror, Clinton say “you should have let me intervene, you need to be careful in situations like this”. The leaders ask her “How could you possibly know what was going to happen?”
“Well, as I always say, it takes a child to raze a village”.Report
Here is one of my nerdy math jokes:
Two math professors are having dinner and get into a discussion about how much the average person knows about math. They agree to a friendly wager: Professor Smith will ask their server a basic calculus question. If she gets it right, he’ll buy dinner. If she gets it wrong, dinner’s on Professor Jones.
Prof. Smith excuses himself to use the bathroom, and Prof. Jones calls the young lady over to the table.
“My friend is going to ask you a question, and I’ll give you an extra $20 if you answer ‘one-third X cubed’.” The slightly confused server agrees, and goes back to the rest of her tables.
When the bill is presented, Prof. Smith says to the server, “Before we know who gets the bill, we need to know if you know the answer to this: what is the integral of X squared?”
“Um, one-third X cubed?” answers the server.
“Well, I’ll be! I guess dinner is my treat” says Prof. Smith as Prof. Jones grins smugly.
As the server walks away with the $20 slipped to her by Prof. Jones, she mutters, “…plus a constant.”Report
Another one:
Q: What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?
A: You can’t cross a scaler with a vector.Report
A month after the floodwaters have receded, and Noah has commanded the animals to go forth and multiply, one pair of snakes still has no offspring. Noah repeatedly harangues the distraught animals, but only makes their stress worse.
Ham, having built a rapport with the reptiles during the time on the ark, spends some time talking to them, and then heads out to the forest and returns dragging a felled tree. He spends the evening sawing it into eight foot lengths. The next day he’s back at work, felling trees, sawing them, constructing what gradually emerges as an immense picnic table
Noah keeps criticizing Ham about the time he’s wasting on a clearly overbuilt picnic table, when there are so many more important structures that need building. Ham only replies that it’s for the sake of the serpents, and goes back to work.
Finally, the table is built, and within the week, the snakes are tenderly caring for their newly hatched brood. Noah approaches Ham and says “My son, I guess I was too hasty in condemning your effort. How did you manage to help the snakes reproduce?” Ham replies “Father, they’re adders. They can only multiply on a log table.”Report
I am ashamed to tell this joke, but I will, anyway, because Christian ideology is wise to recognize that there is evil, the capacity to do things we know we shouldn’t do, in all of us.
Jesus and Moses are hanging out on the beach one day, reminiscing about the good old days.
“Remember this,” Moses says, and he gets up, lifts his arms to the sky in a ray of light, and the sea parts. He holds the pose for a few moments, lowers his arm, and it returns to normal.
“That was a good one,” Jesus said. “People still talk about that one. How ’bout this one,” and Jesus steps out onto the water, and takes a few steps to where it’s deep. He sinks like a stone, and Moses has to pull him out of the water. He lies on the shore, spluttering and shivering, “I don’t know what happened, worked the last time.”
“You didn’t have holes in your feet,” says Moses, “they still talk about that one, too.”Report
Everyone forgets the +CReport
Q: What do the Detroit Lions have in common with Billy Graham?
A: They can make 10,000 people stand up and yell “Jesus Christ!”
*****
Q: Why doesn’t Lansing, Michigan have a professional football team?
A: Because then Detroit would want one.
*****
Guy walks into a bar with his dog. Bartender says, “you can’t bring that dog in here.” Guy says, “please, he’s a huge Lions fan, and we just want to watch the game. He won’t bother a soul.” The bartender is a sucker for Lions fans, so he allows it.
As promised, the dog is as good as gold. He perches on a bar stool and intently watches the game. When the Lions score a field goal, he jumps down, gets on his hind legs and spins in a circle while howling happily. He gets back on the stool and continues to watch the game. When the Lions score a touch down, he gets down and does 3 back flips while howling happily.
“That’s amazing!” says the bartender, “What does he do when they win a game?”
“Dunno,” says his owner, “He’s only 3 years old.”Report