DumbJokesThatAreFunny.com provides an endless stream of jokes. They’re mostly clean, family-friendly, and extremely pun-based.
A typical example is this:
“What do you call a guy with a rubber toe?”
“Roberto.”
Groan, right? But also funny.
Keep your speakers on when you click to reveal the answer.
This post isn’t about the above video. I could make it a geek ramble and discuss the fantastic parallels it draws, but that’s going to be done ad nauseum by others. I want to talk about the underlying idea.
Originally, I found this video at Gizmodo (where I spend a lot of time reading) and laughed. Then I began to read the comments and found an interesting debate had developed: was the video appropriate? Now take it a step further — is humour based on tragedy acceptable?
Side A: Of course it is. By laughing at tragedy and horror, we provide ourselves some sort of healing — a coping strategy to deal with situations that might otherwise be unthinkable. One of the posters on the original thread pulled out a quote from Mel Brooks about The Producers. When asked if comedy is a valid form of revenge, he replied:
Of course it is impossible to take revenge for 6 million murdered Jews. But by using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths.
In this case, we are not laughing at the deaths of millions of individuals — we are finding the comedy in an individual. Certainly it is an individual responsible for heinous acts, but as Brooks states, by laughing at him we deny him any power his memory may have. We can best respect the dead by ensuring that their deaths can not be used as a weapon.
Not to make light of the concept, but this is the idea behind Dumbledore’s statement (in which Harry Potter book, I forget) — and I’m paraphrasing — that fear of the name only increases the fear of the thing itself. By refusing to find the humour in tragedy, we give additional power to that tragedy.
It’s laughing at the schoolyard bully. If they have no power over you, eventually they’ll leave you alone.
Side B: When a situation occurs that reaches a certain level of tragedy — the Holocaust or 9/11, for example — too many peoples’ lives are affected for it to ever me made light of. Comedy is meant to provide some sort of escape, to give some level of relief. Making light of tragedy only brings forth the unintended emotions for those that are affected. It is disrespectful of the dead and is hurtful for the survivors.
Although I can understand this second viewpoint, I don’t agree. I’m a big believer in the healing power of laughter, but respect the opinion that thinks otherwise.
Whichever side of the argument you fall on, you have to admit that the video above is carefully worded — it talks of the situation, provides different viewpoints (and theories), and not once makes light of the dead.
Oh yeah, if you check out the video on Gizmodo instead of on the embedded video above, there is an Easter Egg.
Myrtle Beach Web Design describes themselves as a full-service web design and search-engine optimization company. They specialize in real estate web pages, and I’m guessing that they do an tidy little business down in Myrtle Beach.
But they’ve also got a subsidiary page, at http://www.myrtlebeachwebdesign.com/koala-lizard.html (I can’t find a link to it from their main page) that just hosts a stoner joke — something that you might get on an email, and laid out so that you have to scroll through the supposedly amusing photographs while you’re spoon-fed the joke.
It’s funny enough — not going to bust a gut every time I think about it, but it was fine — but what really gets me is how incongruous it is to have a real estate oriented web design company that just also has this weird little joke page.
It’s like an Easter egg. Maybe this blog should have an Easter egg. I’ll have to work on that.
Sometimes, I tell jokes that require explanation. But now I’ve found a webpage full of jokes that require a college degree! Amy has pointed me towards “Let ε < 0“, which bills itself as “a site dedicated to mathematical funny business, flimflam, fallacies, and feghoots.”
It’s chock-full of jokes like the picture above, though most of the posts are actually text-based. I suspect that much of the academic humour has been floating around as emails, xeroxes and mimeographs for long, long times. Some of the humour is kind of dated. But if you imagine a crotchety old prof having a purple-hued mimeo thumbtacked to his wall, even the dustiest old humour could be hilarious.
I came across a site (thanks, Metafilter) run by twenty-something Avery Edison from England.
It is a medium for her comedic writings, which are part social commentary, part random humorous scenarios, and part religious spoof. A recurring project I enjoyed is a dialogue between Jesus and Judas.
Basically, Jesus is a total dick, and Judas is the voice of reason. I have a feeling this will explain some sort of betrayal …
Here’s a typical exchange:
Judas: Hey, Jesus — I have a question about the Pharisees.
Jesus: Your mother is a prostitute.
Judas: You… you haven’t even heard my question.
Jesus: You just can’t deal with the fact that I tell it like it is.
Judas: No, Encyclopedia Britanica “tells it like it is”. You’re just a douchbag.
Jesus: Oh, hey — my phone’s ringing. I wonder who it is.
Judas: You don’t have a phone.
Jesus: Oh! It’s my dad — God!
Judas: AT&T cancelled your contract…
Jesus: What’s that, God? Judas should cut it out?
Judas: …because you kept trying to pay them in “Jesus dollars”…
Jesus: I agree, Dad, Judas *is* a dick.
Judas: …and because you told that customer representative that you’d send her to hell…
Jesus: You saw Judas’s mom doing *what*, Heavenly Father?
Judas: …and then you asked her out and she said no and you called her a lesbian…
Jesus: So I guess I was, right, huh? Judas’s mom _is_ a prostitute?
Judas: …and then you started crying and she had to call her supervisor and you kept trying to convince them you didn’t understand that the “unlimited” plan only meant 2,000 texts a month. And then they hung up and you were so mad you cursed that fig tree…
Jesus: Thanks, God. Talk to you later.
Judas: …
Jesus: That was God on the pho-
Judas: Yesiheardthankyou.
Funny stuff! Check it out at AveryEdison.com
I found this clip on the blog Cynical-C, where someone commented that they wished this whole interview was uploaded somewhere to watch. I’ll second that! But these few moments make for interesting watching: John Cleese and Michael Palin defend “The Life of Brian” in a debate with the Bishop of Southwark.
It was originally linked from a blog that I’m just about to bookmark, Atheist Media, where they cite the Wikipedia entry:
Shortly after the film was released, Cleese and Palin engaged in a what would become an infamous debate on the BBC2 discussion programme Friday Night, Saturday Morning, in which Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, put the case against the film. Muggeridge and the Bishop had arrived 15 minutes late to see a screening of the picture prior to the debate, missing the establishing scenes which demonstrated that Brian and Jesus were two different characters, and hence contended that it was a send-up of Christ himself.
Both Pythons later felt that there had been a strange role reversal in the manner of the debate, with two young upstart comedians attempting to make serious, well-researched points, while the establishment figures engaged in cheap jibes and point scoring.
And everyone knows it, but nobody says it, because they’re pregnant.
At least that’s what musical-comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates think! I can’t really form an opinion either way because I’ve never closely known a pregnant woman. But it’s pretty funny.
Someone I had never heard of until just now, is dead. Sad when that happens. The Telegraph has a brief piece about Sir Clement Freud (Sigmund’s grandson), who was a radio panellist famous for his deadpan delivery. They include a recording of a joke, above, which was apparently told during a program about soccer.
Not just a jokester and a media man, Freud was Britain’s first celebrity chef, an MP and author of children’s books.
Another one-liner, from his Wikipedia article:
In one edition during his turn to speak he said: “There’s not much doubt but we are in a period of great inflation. As the farmer said to me the other day, ‘Apples are going up,’ to which I replied, ‘This would come as a severe blow to Sir Isaac Newton.’”
(Via BB)
Craig Damrauer has a series of clever “New Math” equations at his website, morenewmath.com. Some of them really made me laugh, like:
Easter Bunny = Santa Claus - Breaking & Entering.
Check them out and tell me your favorite!
(hat tip to design and art blog its nice that)
I find it incredibly interesting that this video is using what can be considered black stereotypes (rap, booty-shakin’) in order to get people to stop living like stereotypes. Or, it could be a total joke with no meaning behind it, what do I know.
People talk about Michelle Obama’s arms. A lot. And I personally don’t get it. It’s almost like a new sex symbol, like how ankles were sexy when it was the only part of a women that would get exposed.
Well, those arms are finally taking to the blogosphere:
Everyone’s been writing about us. Now we’re speaking out. We’re Thunder and Lightning, the First Guns.
The First Guns have spoken.
This is an English version of an online French comedy series. I heard about it the other day on CBC — the guy decided to make stop-motion videos, but was too lazy, so superimposed his own eyes and mouth over the puppets, saving himself about 90% of the niggly little animation stuff.
His “Têtes à claques” series became a sensation in Quebec, then across the ocean in France, too, and now creator Michel Beaudet is making lots of money from his site, plus fending off TV and commercial directing jobs. Nice work! It’s a reminder that, for all the massive amount of English-language content on the Internet, there are these parallel Internets that hardly ever cross over, in whatever language you want.
Thankfully — because they’re hilarious — the “Têtes à claques” are crossing over. Check out this infomercial-style video for the Willi Waller.
Lots more on the website, tac.tv, though they aren’t all as funny as this one. I find many of them to be funnier in the original French, but “Willi Waller” works well in English. You can switch languages up at the top of the page, if you’re bilingue.
Oh, and “têtes à claques,” loosely translated, would be: “a person so ugly or annoying that you can’t help wanting to slap them.”
Listen, the man's surname sounds like a knockoff horror movie (coming soon to drive-ins: "Gore 3: The Gorrifying") so we shouldn't be surprised that he's pure evil.
I know i’m a little late to the April Fool’s Day party with this, but the Christian Science Monitor’s story claiming “Scientists Worldwide Admit Global Warming Is A Hoax” made me laugh too much to not post it.
The kicker is this quote attributed to Al Gore (the now-ex-Nobel laureate):
As long as I can remember, my only goal in life has been to destroy free-market capitalism and replace it with global totalitarian socialism. But it seemed that traditional methods, such as guerrilla warfare, were proving unsuccessful. Then, one day in 1988, as I was strolling through the halls of my giant mansion, it hit me: carbon dioxide.
By striking at the molecule that lies at the heart of industrial civilization, I could bring the whole system to its knees and usher in a workers’ paradise.
Ha! Love it!
It’s an oldie but a goodie — the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time!
There are almost too many good ones in that list to pick out here — I encourage you to read through the list and maybe post your favourite in the comments. I confess to having a soft spot for the many, many, many that were pulled as pranks by media institutions. I wish newspapers these days had half the sense of humour we used to.
Actually, back when I was at the Brandon Shopper & News, I helped pull a prank on our crosstown rivals, the Wheat City Journal. With the help of a departing staffer (whom I was replacing), we crafted a story about a Korean outfit who had come to Brandon in search of used compact discs. Partnering with a local charity, they were able to “resurface” old, scratched-up CDs that no longer played. Like retreaded tires, these newly-resurfaced CDs could be sold more cheaply than brand-new CDs, yet still at a profit.
Best of all, if Westman residents could chip in and donate their unused CDs to these Koreans, the local charity would get a cut of the profits — and it would all go towards the benefit of the Western Canadian Jaundice.
Hmmm …. Western Canadian Jaundice? WCJ? Wheat City Journal?
That’s right — we asked out readers to drop off used CDs at the address of our competitors’ offices. For the skeptical, we even had a website promoting the initiative.
Apparently, they got boatloads of CDs dropped off by well-meaning people. We had, of course, put “Happy April Fool’s Day” at the end of the article, but apparently people were in too much of a hurry to be charitable to bother finishing the story.
By the end of the day, after being yelled at by several layers of my bosses, we promised never to do it again. Sigh.
In that spirit of worker rebellion, I think one of my favourites in the list above is No. 96, the Boston Globe Price Cut:
Readers of the Boston Morning Globe in 1915 could have purchased their papers for half the cost on April Fool’s Day, if they had been alert. The price listed on the front page had been lowered from “Two Cents Per Copy” to “One Cent.” But almost 60,000 copies of the paper were sold before anyone noticed the unannounced price change. When the management of the Globe found out about the change, they were just as surprised as everyone else. The new price turned out to be the responsibility of a mischievous production worker who had surreptitiously inserted the lower value at the last minute as the paper went to print.
