Look, all I've been trying to say is...

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Look, all I've been trying to say is that I know this joke, it's one Poib & I laughed at back in April of 2003 or so, it's ALL PUNCHLINE and NO SETUP, and sometimes it makes me laugh until I mess my desk chair.  We told it to Verthaine, but he just looked sad and turned away, which was kinda strange, because when we told it to Pedro, he laughed and laughed and then one day he laughed himself to death.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen Poib in 9 years, either.

Anyway, I had laughed so hard that I sort of forgot how the joke goes, exactly, though I remember the concept behind it, so it's still funny. I've spent the last 8-9 years trying to tell that joke, that Goddamn knee-slapper of a gag, so that you may also laugh until your guts bleed, but my timing is off or something, because people either "shut down" conversationally, or get really upset when I try.

This puzzles me, because you have to have a laugh, right?

John Dillinger knew the joke, and Pastor Martin Neimoller told a good version of it once, and Einstien had heard it, but he was sort of like Verthaine, he always looked sad afterward.  William Calley told it once, but it didn't translate well. 

And I've never understood that, because it IS funny, if you tilt your head to the left and squint a bit.

Robert MacNamara told it once, and Monsanto is telling it right now, but nobody's listening.  The Smiler tells it damn near every day, but everyone's too busy screaming "SOCIALIST" to hear what he's saying.  They say Dick Cheney told it once, and laughed so hard that he shot Harry Whittington with a shotgun full of birdshot.


I'm telling you fuckers, this thing is FUNNY, and I want everyone to laugh with me.

Or Kill Me.

[Suu]

I get it.

I just laugh until I cry...but then I laugh some more.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

THAT'S The Joke? Yeah, sometimes it's not funny until you remember what your Choices^(TM) are.
THEN it'll make ya SHIT.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

 

[Cainad (dec.)]

There's a dimly lit little space in the mind, right between "getting" the joke and actually laughing about it. No shit, this is science. It's the reason so many people find puns unbearable: puns often hit the "get it" spot but not the laughter spot.

But the REAL Joke just kind of squats in that dark little space and says horrible things to your brain. It rattles back and forth, and it won't stop until you laugh hard enough.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Puns are a ripoff. Like shaggy dog stories, only shaggy dog stories can be used later to fuck with other people, and puns are just shitty.

The REAL joke fucks with EVERYTHING. It's more fun than you could pull off alone, and certainly MORE FUN THAN YOU REALLY WANTED.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Joke is gallows humor, it is hollow laughter in marble halls.  It is well meaning idealistic idiots wrecking everything around them while the real principals smile and lick their lips.  It isn't nice, but that doesn't mean it isn't FUNNY.  In a kind of "laugh until I can't stop screaming" kinda way.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

The joke might be like Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry ditching the cops and hitting the train, only they know all along they're going to hit it.

The joke might be that one guy who made it through the Night Of The Living Dead but ended up getting shot because he was Black.

The joke might be like this if everybody was Kowalski.

But it's probably unimaginably worse.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

The joke is doing everything you can, fighting the odds, pulling yourself up, following the dream . . . and then getting shit on at the finish line because your TPS report doesn't have a cover sheet.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The take away from all this is that laughs don't have to be pleasant.

But you still need them.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

The take away from all this is that laughs don't have to be pleasant.

But you still need them.

Gotta release the pressure somehow or the system will blow and then you're picking teeth out of the walls and pulling innards off the ceiling fan. Your choices are laughing, crying, and flatulence. The best option is laughing at your flatulence which makes others cry.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

The take away from all this is that laughs don't have to be pleasant.

But you still need them.

Gotta release the pressure somehow or the system will blow and then you're picking teeth out of the walls and pulling innards off the ceiling fan. Your choices are laughing, crying, and flatulence. The best option is laughing at your flatulence which makes others cry.

Permission to take this out of context elsewhere?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I was at the office today, in the middle of another grueling hour of sticking the new Corporate Policies™ to these relative innocents, and one of the poor suckers comes over and asks me "Hey, you know, the system we had two weeks ago was working just fine for us. Why do we need your system? I mean, do you enjoy all the mayhem you're causing here? Ha Ha. Just joking."

And I bit my lip, man. Because I'm just joking, too. I've been just joking with these upstanding, undeserving people for a whole month now, and even I didn't realize it until he said something.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

The take away from all this is that laughs don't have to be pleasant.

But you still need them.

Gotta release the pressure somehow or the system will blow and then you're picking teeth out of the walls and pulling innards off the ceiling fan. Your choices are laughing, crying, and flatulence. The best option is laughing at your flatulence which makes others cry.

Permission to take this out of context elsewhere?

Go nuts.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I was at the office today, in the middle of another grueling hour of sticking the new Corporate Policies™ to these relative innocents, and one of the poor suckers comes over and asks me "Hey, you know, the system we had two weeks ago was working just fine for us. Why do we need your system? I mean, do you enjoy all the mayhem you're causing here? Ha Ha. Just joking."

And I bit my lip, man. Because I'm just joking, too. I've been just joking with these upstanding, undeserving people for a whole month now, and even I didn't realize it until he said something.

I congratulate you on not using his teeth to polish your shoelaces.