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Anti jokes

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 26 Dec 2017, 22:09

An anti joke is a kind a joke that's funny because it's not.

For example, in Germany they have Antiwitze. Here's ein Antiwitz.

Zwei Männer gehen über eine Brücke. Der eine fällt ins Wasser, der andere heißt Helmut.

Two men were crossing a bridge. One fell in the water. The other's name was Helmut."

Get the idea? They begin as a plausible mini-narrative but then suddently veer off on a wild and inconsequental trajectory.

Here's one I read years ago (I don't any longer know its source).

A man goes to the doctor.

'How can I help?', the doctor asks.

'I've got a bite on my neck', the man replies.

'Let me see' says the doctor. 'Oh that's nasty! Where did you get it?'

'I did it myself', the man says with a slight blush.

The doctor is lost for words at first, then asks, wonderingly: 'How could you bite your own neck?'

The man replies: 'I was standing on a chair at the time.'

(Ed. I hope the doctor had an antidote available.)




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Me in a rare cheerful mood

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A friend of mine in the Scouts had a very odd sense of humour which became more so into adulthood.

One of his frequently told jokes was:

A fish goes into a shop and asks for a loaf of bread.

"White or brown?" asks the shopkeeper.

"It doesn't matter" says the fish.  "I've got my bike outside".

Whereupon he would go into fits of giggles.

His favourite joke was:

What's the difference between a duck?

One of its legs is both the same.

That always made me laugh, much as a four-year old would!

When introduced to Ivor Cutler a year or so later, I found an entire repertoire of such material.  I was wrong-footed in that introduction as it was by a Scottish computer team leader who used to sing "I believe in bugs, I truly believe in bugs" whenever reviewing or testing someone's code.  When I came across that as a song on one of his albums much later, I experienced 'transportation' for the first time and my whole world suddenly grew bigger and more open.

Wandering further (or is it farther?) off-topic, my favourite Ivor Cutler song is not nonsense and contains the chorus line "When a man thinks about a thing as much as that, it's a very good reason for a song".  The song in question, I have found on numerous occasions, is not considered politically correct enough to be sung in offices, despite it being correct in itself.

For those not exposed to Ivor Cutler, a classic introduction is Egg Meat.  Much of his work has me crying in laughter, but I don't know why.