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March 28, 2024, 02:44:47 PM

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Jokes you need explaining to you

Started by solidified gruel merchant, July 05, 2019, 04:23:44 PM

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Jockice

Quote from: Jumblegraws on July 07, 2019, 04:35:40 PM
Mmm nah I'm with Jockice here, I like his version better because it (mildly) comments on the way words and terms drift from their original meaning and how repetition of stock phrases contributes to this. We live in a world where "literally" has a recognised non-literal meaning. Jockice was ahead of his time in pointing out the ostensive absurdities linguistic drift can produce.

Hurrah! I think anyway. I was just imagining it as the sort of thing Smashie or Nicey would say.  Although it was probably before they even existed, so you can envisage a local radio DJ saying it without even realising if you want. Possibly.

New page: Not a joke, it really is a new page.

kalowski

Quote from: Gregory Torso on July 07, 2019, 08:54:38 AM
I had a book of Giles Brandreth's Hilarious Book Of Jokes Bumper Book or whatever, a big joke book you know, amd there was this joke that I never could understand, and I'm still not sure I really do:

"What's that gash on your forehead?"
"I bit myself."
"How did you do that?"
"I stood on a chair."

I mean what the hell, Gile Randreth, in what kind of world does that make sense?
This was also in either The Crack-a-Joke Book or Up With Skool, two books of jokes I had when young.
I liked it, because it was deliberately absurd.

Icehaven

Quote from: Jumblegraws on July 05, 2019, 07:56:13 PM
I think you're referring to the one with the nondescript man putting his electronics away after some mundane exchange with some other character, in a joke that was supposed to be about privacy-intruding technology or something? There was a letter written in about that one that made me feel less alone.

Yes that was it! I can't even remember if it was explained or not, lost the will to live tbh.

Panbaams

Quote from: icehaven on July 07, 2019, 10:34:54 PM
Yes that was it! I can't even remember if it was explained or not, lost the will to live tbh.

I remember this. It was a gag about the Internet of things, I believe.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Jockice on July 07, 2019, 04:47:40 PM
Hurrah! I think anyway. I was just imagining it as the sort of thing Smashie or Nicey would say.  Although it was probably before they even existed, so you can envisage a local radio DJ saying it without even realising if you want. Possibly.

New page: Not a joke, it really is a new page.

It reminds me of the Mrs Trellis bits in ISIHAC, e.g.:
Quote...but first I notice we've had an avalanche of correspondence this week. The letter comes from a Mrs. Trellis of North Wales.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Jumblegraws on July 07, 2019, 10:05:01 AM
Seems like just one of those deliberate lapse-in-logic quips, like when someone is overwhelmed at work and says something like "when I left for lunch I passed myself coming back into the office". So in this case, propping yourself up on a chair is a common household solution for accessing something otherwise out of reach, but here this familiar method doesn't make sense, and the second speaker is comically treating the positioning of their forehead as higher up than the mouth as the issue rather than the fact that it's physically impossible to contort oneself such that one can bite one's own forehead. This equals funny.
You probably surmised this for yourself. It is a fucking strange inclusion for a joke book as opposed to a conversation between Groucho and Chico Marx.

I like it, but I didn't get it till you explained it. I was indeed trying to work out what kind of contortion he was implying rather than just needing to get a bit higher to reach. Thanks for that.

EbbyVale

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on July 08, 2019, 12:45:11 AM
I like it, but I didn't get it till you explained it. I was indeed trying to work out what kind of contortion he was implying rather than just needing to get a bit higher to reach. Thanks for that.

The version I heard has "How did you reach?" instead of "How did you do that?" I think that's a key difference that Gyles has muffed there, as it points more clearly to the absurdity.

I suspect the joke has music hall origins. The telling I know is from an LP dated 1960 that's packaged for kiddies, which usually means unoriginal and well-worn material.

Twed

Quote from: the on July 07, 2019, 02:14:27 PM
Domingo is a Spanish name. So, assuming that Little Oakley is a small village, it follows that Domingo either works at or is the owner of said tapas bar. Thus blowing his cover even more.
It is a small village on the edge of Dovercourt. My grandmother and other white people live there. It would never have something as exotic as a tapas bar.

DrGreggles

Quote from: Twed on July 08, 2019, 02:40:04 AM
It is a small village on the edge of Dovercourt. My grandmother and other white people live there. It would never have something as exotic as a tapas bar.

No travel tavern in Linton either.
Nor is there a spice museum in Longstanton.

Partridge needs to STOP GETTING EAST ANGLIA WRONG!



Several owl sanctuaries though...

Twed

I think everything he said about Manningtree was pretty accurate.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: Jockice on July 07, 2019, 12:17:19 PMWhen I used to write the music stuff for the local paper in my early 20s I referred to a single as having 'shot straight into the top ten. At number 37.'' To me it was an obvious lapse in logic gag but I ended up having a memo sent to me from the news editor accusing me of making the paper look stupid AND a huge argument with my dad over it, because he seemed to take it as some sort of sign that I was an idiot.  To this day (and considering my writing was and still is full of daft bits of wordplay) I can't see why people found that so objectionable. To me it was obviously a joke. Perhaps not a great joke but a joke nonetheless.

I'm also with you on this one.  If you'd written:

"shot straight into the top ten at number 37."

they'd have had a point (given it was a local paper), but the use of the full-stop:

"shot straight into the top ten. At number 37."

makes it clear as day that it's just a bit of absurdist humour.

Captain Z

Skin specialist: Ah ha! As I suspected, it's a koundis.

Ross from friends: What's a koundis?

Skin specialist: I don't know, what's a koundis with you?

Ambient Sheep

As for the "mowing the lawn" thing, my own interpretation when I first read it here, although not 100% certain, was a combination of the two extremes, namely that:

He was performing oral sex on (and possibly pubic-shaving) women at an actual battered women's shelter.

Which is obviously a very inappropriate thing to do.  And not very funny either.  Would more context be helpful, I wonder?

godber

Two nuns in a bath. One says "where's the soap?". The other says "yes it does rather".

I needed that one explaining. I always thought the second nun was hard of hearing, so her answer doesn't make sense, but the funny part is imagining what on earth she was thinking.

Also, nearly every joke at a Shakespeare play that the rest of the audience laugh rather too loudly at, proudly signalling that they are better than me.

Jumblegraws

Quote from: godber on July 08, 2019, 03:49:14 PM
Two nuns in a bath. One says "where's the soap?". The other says "yes it does rather".

I needed that one explaining. I always thought the second nun was hard of hearing, so her answer doesn't make sense, but the funny part is imagining what on earth she was thinking.

Also, nearly every joke at a Shakespeare play that the rest of the audience laugh rather too loudly at, proudly signalling that they are better than me.
EDIT: re-read your post and realised that you get it. Sorry.

Twed

Quote from: godber on July 08, 2019, 03:49:14 PM
Also, nearly every joke at a Shakespeare play that the rest of the audience laugh rather too loudly at, proudly signalling that they are better than me.
I hate Shakespearian comedy.

"Oooh, country matters. Sounds like cunt doesn't it."

It's fine to enjoy that, if it's 1600. In 2019 you're only quoting it because you think the association with Shakespeare makes you look cultured. There's a special kind of fake laugh that accompanies jokes like that. It goes "pif piff piff pif piff pif piff piff!" and then the laugher dies.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: godber on July 08, 2019, 03:49:14 PM
Two nuns in a bath. One says "where's the soap?". The other says "yes it does rather".

I needed that one explaining.

Yeah, I didn't get it for ages.  (The version I heard at school was "Yes it does, doesn't it?")  I just thought it was some bit of random whimsy, but in my defence I should point out that I may have been told it around the same time that the joke-teller's best mate regaled me with the first surreal joke I'd ever heard:

   Q. What's the difference between a duck?
   A. One of its legs is both the same.

So I just assumed that the nuns in the bath joke was more of the same... despite it being told in the same session as the far clearer:

   Two nuns cycling down a cobbled
   street.  One says to the other "I've
   never come this way before".




The nuns in the bath joke is a frequent offender in this sort of thread, so don't worry, we're not alone:

2004 (May)
2004 (December)
2010 (lots of people here)
2014

The duck joke pops up in those too.  Also, as already mentioned in one of those threads, I once misunderstood a joke because my mind was being TOO filthy:

   Q. Do you use a dictaphone?
   A. No, I use my finger like everyone else.

I completely missed the "dick to [tele]phone" penis-in-the-dial/prodding-the-buttons implication, instead thinking it was an obscure joke about women masturbating using a dictaphone in some weird way rather than a finger.  I remember thinking that your average dictaphone probably wouldn't vibrate enough to be useful...

Sebastian Cobb

It took me ages to get the nun joke as well.

Captain Z

I'm still not sure I get it. I had assumed it was something to do with nuns having to shave their body hair (?), which was making the soap wear away faster than it typically would.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Captain Z on July 08, 2019, 05:23:49 PM
I'm still not sure I get it. I had assumed it was something to do with nuns having to shave their body hair (?), which was making the soap wear away faster than it typically would.

one of the nun's is slunting it.

Twed

From Short Circuit:

QuoteHoward Marner: What if it goes out and melts down a bus load of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that one?
Benjamin Jabituya: Nun soup?

Is the joke just that Ben came up with a really blunt headline, or is there something about "Nun soup" that I'm missing? "None soup"?

kalowski

Pushing this bar of soap in and out of my vagina in an attempt to be sexually gratified, since as a nun I am unable to engage in intercourse, results in a general wearing down of the object in question.

jobotic

I had to look up those nun jokes after watching Bernard Right-On. I got the "wears the soap" straight away, but "are you blind? It's right there on the soap dish" is so much better a line than "it does rather".

Twed

Quote from: kalowski on July 08, 2019, 05:32:04 PM
Pushing this bar of soap in and out of my vagina in an attempt to be sexually gratified, since as a nun I am unable to engage in intercourse, results in a general wearing down of the object in question.
Ah, thanks for that. I thought the nun part of it was just part of general joke tradition, like an English, Irishman and a Scotsman etc.

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on July 05, 2019, 04:29:24 PM
Referencing a lyric by The Clash (White Man In Hammersmith Palais).

I hope that doesn't helps.

Thank you. I listened to the song and remembered that I don't like the clash.

Quote from: Captain Z on July 08, 2019, 03:46:24 PM
Skin specialist: Ah ha! As I suspected, it's a koundis.

Ross from friends: What's a koundis?

Skin specialist: I don't know, what's a koundis with you?

I've always found that to be a funny line in that episode.  For context, the 'specialist' is actually a hippy-dippy new age spiritual healer type, who doesn't really know what he's talking about.  It's just a non-sequitur, I don't think it has any deeper meaning, but the delivery and the line itself have always tickled me.

Jockice

How do you get a nun pregnant?
Fuck her!

rasta-spouse

All the nun jokes have the underlying premise that nuns are gagging for it. So I get that. I went to a cave once that was full of stalagmites shaped like dongs and guess what? It was called "Nun's Cave". That was its name from way back in history.

But can someone explain the "difference between a duck" joke? None of my nun knowledge is useful here.

All Surrogate

Julian and Sandy - Bona Seats

Quote
Julian:Do you think he'd enjoy Così Fan Tutte?
Ken:Mozart?
Sandy:Please yourself, we only fix the seats.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: rasta-spouse on July 08, 2019, 08:48:21 PMBut can someone explain the "difference between a duck" joke? None of my nun knowledge is useful here.

There's nothing to explain.  It's a deliberately-nonsensical non-joke.