CHAT: jokes (was: Fdnyldjikyl Inglyx)

Nik Taylor wrote:

> > A British fellow was touring an orchard in America, and the tour guide
> > was explaining what they did with all the fruit. "We eat what we can,
> > and what we can't we can."
The point is the paradox here: what we can't [eat], we can [i.e. store in
cans].


> > The British fellow thought that this was just so amusing that he had to
> > go and tell his friends about it first thing when he got home. "You see,
> > they eat what they can," he told them, "and what they can't, they put up!"
But when translated to British ("Am I British?  If I were any more British,
I couldn't talk at all!"), the point is lost.  The meta-point, which is the
true punchline, is that the Britisher is so meat-headed that he doesn't
realize the joke is no longer funny.

"When you tell a Frenchman a joke, he laughs when he hears it.  When you
tell a German a joke, he laughs twice: once when he hears it, once when
he understand it.  When you tell an Englishman a joke, he laughs three
times: once when he hears it, once when he understands it, and once when
he retells it at his club.

"But when you tell a Jew a joke, he interrupts you halfway through
to tell you his 'improved' version."

:-)

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)