The Monday Morning Mirth

Tag: England

  • The Telephone and the Dog

    It’s common practice in England to ring a telephone by sending extra voltage across one side of the two wire circuit and ground (earth in England). When the subscriber answers the phone, it switches to the two wire circuit for the conversation. This method allows two parties on the same line to be signalled without disturbing each other.

    An elderly lady with several pets called to say that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called; and that on the few occasions when it did ring her dog always barked first. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog.

    He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialled the subscriber’s house. The phone didn’t ring. He tried again. The dog barked loudly, followed by a ringing telephone.

    Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:

    1. The dog was tied to the telephone system’s ground post via an iron chain and collar.

    2. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signalling current.

    3. After several such jolts, the dog would start barking and urinating on the ground.

    4. The wet ground now completed the circuit and the phone would ring.

    Which shows you that some problems can be fixed by just pissing on them. But only temporarily.

  • The World’s Funniest Joke

    LONDON (Reuters) – After a year of painstaking scientific research, the world’s funniest joke was revealed on Thursday.

    In a project described as the largest-ever scientific study into humor, the British Association for the Advancement of Science asked Internet users around the world to submit their favorite jokes and rate the funniness of other people’s offerings.

    More than 40,000 jokes from 70 countries and two million critiques later, this is it:

    "Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services.

    He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: "Take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead."

    There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

    Back on the phone, the hunter says, "Ok, now what?"

    Researchers found significant differences between nations in the types of jokes they found funny.

    People from the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Australia and New Zealand preferred gags involving word play, such as:

    PATIENT: "Doctor, I’ve got a strawberry stuck up my bum."

    DOCTOR: "I’ve got some cream for that."

    Americans and Canadians favored jokes where people were made to look stupid.

    TEXAN: "Where are you from?"

    HARVARD GRAD: "I come from a place where we do not end our sentences with prepositions."

    TEXAN: "OK — where are you from, jackass?"

    Meanwhile, many Europeans liked gags that were surreal or made light of serious subjects such as illness, death and marriage:

    A patient says, "Doctor, last night I made a Freudian slip, I was having dinner with my mother-in-law and wanted to say: ‘Could you please pass the butter?’

    "But instead I said: ‘You silly cow, you have completely ruined my life."’

    Marriage-mocking also featured in the top American joke:

    "A man and a friend are playing golf one day. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course.

    "He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer. His friend says: ‘Wow that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You are truly a kind man.’

    "The man then replies: ‘Yeah, well, we were married 35 years."’

    Death earned big laughs in Scotland:

    "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers."

    And animals figured prominently. Take the number one joke in England:

    "Two weasels are sitting on a bar stool. One starts to insult the other one. He screams, ‘I slept with your mother!’

    "The bar gets quiet as everyone listens to see what the other weasel will do.

    "The first again yells, ‘I SLEPT WITH YOUR MOTHER!’

    "The other says: ‘Go home dad, you’re drunk."’

    The survey revealed other fun facts:

    — Of the countries rating the highest number of jokes, Germans, perhaps surprisingly, laughed the most. Canadians laughed least.

    — If you want to tell a funny animal joke, make it a duck.

    — The most frequently submitted joke, at 300 times, was: "What’s brown and sticky? A stick."

    Researchers said no one ever found it funny.

  • English is a Crazy Language

    Let’s face it — English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

    We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

    And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

    Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

    If teachers taught, why didn’t preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

    Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

    How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another.

    Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

    You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

    English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.