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CHAT: jokes (was: Fdnyldjikyl Inglyx)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Friday, December 10, 1999, 20:28
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)