Re: OT elephants, Wales (was NATLANG: Chinese parts of speech (or lack thereof)

On Thursday, August 12, 2004, at 05:10 , John Cowan wrote:

> Philippe Caquant scripsit:
>
>> I guess the first one has a sexual connotation,
>> referring to Tarzan's balls,
After mulling over it for a couple of days, I still can't see what it has
to do with Tarzan's testicles. Are these as tiny as bluberries? In any
case, how do the elephants fit into the joke? I don't see the connexion.

I must confess no sexual connotation occurred to me when I read the joke.
Maybe I'm just getting old  :=(

>> but I cannot make
>> anything out of the secund one. "Peanut butter" to me
>> refers to the USA, to Jimmy Carter or to Charlie
>> Brown.
>
> The only thing I can think of is that kids traditionally feed peanuts
> to circus elephants, or used to.
Yep. I assumed the critters had been eating peanuts.
=====================================================================
On Thursday, August 12, 2004, at 05:36 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]
> I always heard that joke as part of a group, with the setup found in an
> earlier joke:
>
>         How do you know when an elephant has been in your refrigerator?
>         The round footprints in the peanut butter.
Well, yes - and delicious it is, too.

"Peanut butter" to me refers to the jar I have in the fridge at home here
in the good ol' UK.

I'm surprised Philippe associates it so firmly with the other side of the
Pond. My daughter-in-law is 100% French, from the very center of the
Hexagon, and she just loves the stuff. I had assumed she acquired this
taste long ago in her homeland, but maybe it's something she acquired
since living here.

Ray
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