Funny Joke Biography
source(google.com.pk)
If you have to explain a joke, the old saw has it, then it’s not funny.
It could even be dangerous to do so. For instance, take this gem of English-language humor: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, buddy, why the long face?” It’s just the sort of jape that a time-traveler would employ in conversation with, say, Genghis Khan, who would probably boil said voyager alive as just punishment for the groans that would ensue after an interpreter (never mind the differences between modern English and the Mongolian of centuries past) explained the idiom “to have a long face.” (On that note, this philosophical statement: Genghis Khan, but Immanuel Kant.)
It could even be dangerous to do so. For instance, take this gem of English-language humor: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, buddy, why the long face?” It’s just the sort of jape that a time-traveler would employ in conversation with, say, Genghis Khan, who would probably boil said voyager alive as just punishment for the groans that would ensue after an interpreter (never mind the differences between modern English and the Mongolian of centuries past) explained the idiom “to have a long face.” (On that note, this philosophical statement: Genghis Khan, but Immanuel Kant.)
Now try this one: A bee is flying alongside another bee. He notices that his fellow apian is wearing a yarmulke. “What’s with the headgear?” he asks. “You want I should be taken for a WASP?” comes the reply.
Certainly it can be socially and politically daring to explore the workings of a joke, as Albert Brooks discovers in the course of his not-so-funny movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. (On that note, this unobligatory aside for the benefit of the Iranian site that regularly hijacks this blog: Q: How many members of the Council of Guardians does it take to change a light bulb? A: None, because there are no light bulbs in the Middle Ages.) And as for the joke-dissecting that goes on in the exquisitely foul film The Aristocrats—well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.
Jokes cannot kill, with all respect to the brilliant lads of Monty Python, one of whose sketches concerns a joke developed by British intelligence against the Nazis, a notoriously humorless bunch who nonetheless expire in spasms of laughter. Nazi scientists attempt to retaliate, as Hitler roars before an adoring crowd, “My dog has no nose!” The crowd shouts back, “How does he smell?” “Awful!”
All the same, according to research conducted a few years back at the University of Hertfordshire, the funniest joke in the world, the one that most easily travels across cultures, is about death. It goes something like this:
Two hunters are out hunting. One of them falls over and seems not to be breathing. His friend calls 911* and cries, “What do I do?” “Well, first, let’s make sure he’s dead,” says the operator. There is silence, and then a shot rings out. The hunter returns to the phone and says, “Okay, now what?”
It’s a good joke, to be sure. But curiously, the jokes that seemed to work the best on the cross-cultural charts were just over 100 words long, with the optimum number being 103. The full version of the hunters joke tips in at 102 words, lending credence to the notion that a strange numerology is at play. Couple that with linguistic studies that suggest that velar consonants are funnier than alveodentals and sibilants and such (thus “kayak” is a funny word, “yellow” and “sassy” not so much), and we have the beginnings of a formula. Back to the drawing board, then….
Oh, and breaking news, to return to the Python front: The Norwegian blue parrot, it appears, really did exist. Where’s that time traveler now that we need him?
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