Re: OT: national humor

On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 06:36  AM, John Cowan wrote:

> But then there's the Israeli astronautical program, which sets the
> ambitious objective of landing a man on the sun.  The heat, the
> radiation?
> No problem.  They will of course go at night.
According to a recent NPR interview with Yakov Smirnov, this joke is
about the Soviet space program.

> These jokes prove something about cultural relativity, but I'm not
> sure what.  As for the rabbits in Texas, they may not be kangaroos, but
> they do have respectably large ears!  (My own home state of New Jersey
> is better known for its mosquitoes -- why, a good many of them weigh a
> pound [2.2 kg], and they sit on tree leaves and bark when people go
> by.)
Other states also seem to take perverse pride in the size of the
mosquitos; I've heard similar things about them from Alaska and
Minnesota. Luckily for me the mosquitos in Utah are very small and
rather scarce. Must have something to do with being on the edge of a
desert (i.e., no standing water). Arizona was even better for lack of
mosquitos, but it more than makes up for it with crickets and
cockroaches.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie